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MISSIONARY MESSAGES 
Rev. JAMES F. LOVE, d.d. 



MISSIONARY 
MESSAGES 



BY 



Rev. JAMES F. LOVE, d.d. 

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, FOREIGN MISSION BOARD, S.B.C. 

Author of "The Unique Message and Universal Mission of 

Christianity" "The Mission of Our Nation" "The 

Union Movement" "Spiritual Farming" etc. 




NEW yQgpr YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






Copy right j IQ22, 
By George H. Doran Company 






MISSIONARY MESSAGES. II 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

JUL 24*2? 

©CI.A681050 



To 

KATHARINE STITH LOVE 
AND 

ELIZABETH SPEED LOVE 
BY THEIR DEVOTED 
Father 



PREFACE 

As indicated by the title, this book is, for the most part, 
composed of missionary messages which have been deliv- 
ered by the author on various occasions. They are issued 
in the present form for the single purpose that they were 
at first delivered orally, namely, to quicken interest in For- 
eign Missions. In the main they have to do with Foreign 
Missions as a common Christian enterprise, but at points 
they deal specifically with the Baptist foreign mission pro- 
gram. There was in the delivery and there is here no dis- 
position to evade the distinctive views and policies which 
characterize Southern Baptists and control their foreign 
mission work. An effort has been made to state the de- 
nominational viewpoint as inoffensively as frankly, and 
to use this to strengthen the foreign mission motive. No 
man ought to hold a religious opinion or alliance of which 
he is ashamed. Neither should one state his personal or 
denominational views in irreligious spirit or manner. 
Thoughtful men will agree that the only certain course to 
better understanding, mutual respect and concord among 
the Christian forces which are engaged in this commanding 
world enterprise of Foreign Missions is for each group to 
state with proper Christian decorum those views and prin- 
ciples which it holds and would have obtain in the conduct 
of the work and thus allow others to examine these on their 
merit. Respect of one Christian denomination for another 
will be promoted and that Christian unity, about which so 
much is said in foreign mission circles, will be the more cer- 
tainly realized by clear and frank confession rather than by 
sentimental slurring of the comparatively few points of dif- 
ference between the evangelical forces of Christendom. 
The agitation for Christian union gathers so distinctly about 



viii PREFACE 

Foreign Missions, and sentiment hostile to denominational- 
ism is so strong in foreign mission circles, that one can 
scarcely write or speak on certain phases of Foreign Mis- 
sions without coming upon matters at issue. While there is 
here no side-stepping of these issues, the author's desire and 
hope is that these messages shall be read in the light of the 
missionary purpose which produced them and controls their 
publication, and that the cause for which they plead shall be 
strengthened in the consciences of the home constituency 
and on the mission fields. 

James F. Love. 
Richmond, Va. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Value of the Missionary Ideal . . 13 

II The Home Base 25 

III The Baptist Program for Europe . . 36 

IV Baptist Missions in the New World Order 57 
V Baptist Women in the Baptist World Pro- 
gram 72 

VI Decisive Hour in Baptist Foreign Missions 86 
VII The New World Conditions and Their Sig- 
nificance 93 

VIII The Relation of the Missionary Message 

to Missionary Success 108 

IX The Religion of the Future . . . .117 
X The Uplifted Eye . . . . . .132 



MISSIONARY MESSAGES 



MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

CHAPTER I 

THE VALUE OF THE MISSIONARY IDEAL 

THE Christian calling is, in brief but comprehensive 
statement, the execution of the Great Commission. 
Our life-task is to perform the duties which that Commis- 
sion prescribes and to tie up the consciences of men with 
the authority which it claims. The Commission describes 
the sphere of Christian activity, designates Christian duty 
and presents ample opportunity for the exercise of the 
highest powers and the fulfillment of the largest legitimate 
ambition a Christian can have. It requisitions our time, 
our talent, our training, our wealth, and promises profitable 
investment for them all. 

The modern word which most completely embraces the 
duties set forth in the Commission is the word "missions. " 
This word marks, as no other word does, the central thought 
and whole round of duties prescribed. Like every great 
idea, missions has great value for those who aspire to emi- 
nent lives and eminent usefulness. We will do well to fix 
for this word a large place in our lives. 

Growing perhaps out of the Roman Catholic use of the 
word "missions" to distinguish ecclesiastical sub-stations in 
different countries, we commonly use the word as a plural 
noun. This use, I think, shunts our thinking from the 
essential nature of missions as an integral part of Chris- 
tianity itself. Mission stations are incidents in the mission- 
ary life of Christianity. Missions designates the genius, 
the controlling spirit of Christian discipleship, and belongs 
to the elemental Christian moralities. Missions is that to 

13 



14 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

which the churches have been commissioned, the Christian 
calling and occupation. For this reason J prefer to use the 
word as a singular noun. I am here talking about the active 
translation and fulfillment of the Commission, the very 
spirit and behavior of obedient discipleship. A man can 
no more be a disciple of Christ and not be missionary than 
he can be a Christian and not be truthful or honest. 

Missions is God's plan and Jesus' program for the sal- 
vation of the world. It characterizes the spirit and volun- 
tary act of the Saviour himself, explains the purpose for 
which the Holy Spirit was sent, and describes the scheme 
by which the Kingdom of God is promoted among men. 
It names the vocation of Christian men and women, the 
business of the churches for which the Spirit is given and 
the conditions on which the presence of Christ is prom- 
ised. Into this word and enterprise to which it is applied, 
flows like a crystal river the redemptive purpose of God for 
a lost world. He has conditioned the salvation of the world 
upon the obedience of his disciples to the Commission. 
Missions is vital to New Testament Christianity. 

I am aware that ignorant and stupid men sometimes use 
words of which they do not know the meaning, and we 
excuse them, but the fact is there is no rational ground on 
which a man can stand and claim to be a Christian and 
disclaim missionary obligation and duty. Men may be 
better than their parrot creeds, but Christ's word is, "He that 
gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." No man ever 
got Christ for a personal Saviour on an anti-mission impor- 
tunity. He who says, "Lord, I want you for myself, but I 
will not share you with another," goes down to his house 
unjustified. The Lord does not start into our lives if He 
is forbidden to go through them to others. 

Again, "missions" is more than is indicated by any adjec- 
tive which we may use to designate mission work. "City 
missions," "state missions," "home missions," and even "for- 
eign missions," while indicating important aspects of our 
task, instance the failure of the adjective to do compre- 
hensive service. The noun is the important and significant 



THE MISSIONARY IDEAL 15 

word in each case. Foreign mission work in China, for in- 
stance, will be "missions" when the missionary volunteer gets 
to it, although it will not longer be "foreign missions" for 
him. 

Moreover, missions does not designate a certain class of 
Christian service as distinct and separate from all other 
Christian activities. Considered from the viewpoint of the 
primary and paramount task, we may think of missions as 
saving lost folks. Whoever leads a sinner to Christ is a 
missionary, whether it be done by one who goes under the 
Commission to Asia, or Africa, or a mother who in tender 
love and by beautiful life turns the feet of her own child 
into the way of salvation. Any one who saves a soul is 
a missionary. 

But the Commission does not limit missions to the saving 
of souls. Conversion of the sinner is the cataclysmic, but 
it is not the climacteric work in the missionary process. 
Set this work to the front and magnify it, for without it 
all else that we do comes to naught, but do not accept a 
definition of missions which casts a shadow on other parts 
of the task by' which we translate, expound, and execute 
the Commission. One of the hopeful things attending this 
missionary era is that, like everything which has in it the 
vitalities of our Christianity, missions is, in practice, a grow- 
ing and expanding Christian service. With our growing 
fidelity to Christ in missionary operations we are expand- 
ing our definition of missions. Attempting to do what He 
commanded, we are learning to do what He did and all that 
He commanded. Jesus not only saved men, He healed, com- 
forted, instructed and encouraged men and women. All 
these things were a part of His mission. He saved the 
soul and then sought to make the body a fit dwelling place 
for it. He saved men and women, and then set them to 
making the world a suitable and congenial place for saved 
men and women. All this fell within the scope of his 
ministry and falls within ours. The salvation of a 
man, his soul, his life, his talents, his powers, his posses- 
sions, and the bringing of all these under the benedic- 



16 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

tion and proprietorship of Christ is contemplated in mis- 
sions. 

The grasp of the Commission thus comprehensively is 
one of the signs of growth accompanying the missionary 
movement. A conscience for social service and Christian 
stewardship is itself a product and expression of the growing 
missionary spirit. We have begotten a conscience for these 
things by the practice of obedience to Christ. As we have 
tried to make more Christians, we have been learning how 
to make better Christians. Committing ourselves to the task 
of saving men's souls, we are learning how to save their 
bodies and their substance from the service and dominion 
of Satan. Says Prof. Harnack, "The gospel aims at found- 
ing a community among men as wide as human life itself 
and as deep as human need." Social work is not a gospel 
but a service and should be observed as a duty and subor- 
dinated to the eternal issue of saving the lost. 

There is, therefore, a mission to the saved as well as a 
mission of the saved. "When thou art converted, strengthen 
thy brethren" is an ancient missionary admonition. "Con- 
firming the churches" was an important part of Paul's mis- 
sionary labors. We are not only to increase the number 
of believers, but the value and efficiency of those who have 
been converted and set them about their main business. 
To make Christians missionary is as necessary to the ful- 
fillment of the Commission as making converts. All of us, 
therefore, — teachers, preachers, Sunday School workers, all, 
— can participate in this world-wide enterprise, and be 
loyal missionaries. 

Having set these definitions before you, I shall now discuss 
the value of the missionary ideal. 



I will, then, first discuss the value of the missionary ideal 
to the ministry, 

1. The missionary ideal will enrich the minister's senti- 
mental and enlarge his mental life. In the study of missions 



THE MISSIONARY IDEAL 17 

he will find opening to him world conditions and a chal- 
lenge of world problems and world needs which broaden his 
thinking and deepen his feeling. The mind of a preacher 
with a missionary ideal expands in the effort to grasp a 
vast and manifold enterprise. His sympathies are enlarged 
as he discovers human need. He will find his powers 
stretching in response to the world call. Even mediocre 
men have, under the spell of this ideal, become world 
masters. Carey was a married man and still a shoemaker 
at his bench when this ideal began to charm and master 
him. The Missionary ideal found him when he was poor, 
ignorant, obscure. When he first talked of the missionary 
enterprise, he was rebuked, snubbed, and ridiculed where 
he was not ignored, but, after he had been transformed by 
it, he was "wined and dined" by lords and ladies. Under 
the spell of this ideal Mathew T. Yates, a Wake County 
North Carolina clodhopper, climbed over the walls of severe 
limitation and led the hearts of Southern Baptists captive 
across the Pacific Ocean, and in the midst of his labors and 
under the inspiration of this ideal, he actually grew tw^o 
inches in physical stature after he was twenty-eight years 
of age. Foreign Missions has immortalized hundreds of 
men and women as it has vitalized the churches of Christ 
wherever and whenever they have practiced it. 

2. The missionary ideal gives practical value to the min- 
ister's reading. Preachers learn to love study. How much 
of your reading helps you to fulfill the Commission ? Some- 
thing you must read. The minister will either read and 
grow, or he will stunt and go. The people will not long 
frequent a dry well. He who reads will either select his 
reading with discrimination and definite purpose, or he 
will dissipate mental energy and waste precious time. The 
wise minister will give large place in his reading to that 
which bears upon the main business of his calling. The 
missionary ideal will create an interest in missionary litera- 
ture. What inspiration there is in the lives of missionary 
heroes, their heroic deeds, sacrifices and achievements! 
These, illuminated in the best Christian biography, will 



18 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

provide illustrative material for sermons and addresses which 
will, for very abundance, embarrass you, and such illustra- 
tions will bear practically upon your task. Incidents in the 
lives of missionaries and of their converts will thrill the 
preacher's soul and set his ministry on fire. There is much 
literature prepared for preachers that is fruitless and profit- 
less. I have a volume by an Andover professor, which con- 
tains scholarship that it would take three score and ten 
years to acquire, but which has not in it enough Christian 
truth or sermon suggestion to comp'ose or inspire a twenty 
minutes* prayer meeting talk. That book was written for 
preachers ! 

3. The missionary ideal will, as well as anything, deter- 
mine the spirit and the virility of the preacher's ministry. 
It will keep him out of the deep ruts which homiletic habits 
have made, and out of which many times the preacher has 
climbed on dusty platitudes while the people have groaned. 
The world's complaint of dry orthodoxy has not been 
p'rovoked by orthodoxy, mind you, but by dry orthodoxy. 
The essential gospel of evangelical Christianity is the juiciest, 
the freshest, the most appetizing, and the most refreshing 
doctrine in the world. Theology is made fascinating by the 
missionary spirit in the preacher and its missionary appli- 
cation in the sermon. The preacher with the missionary 
ideal both recites and demonstrates that the gospel is the 
power of God. The missionary preacher deals in living 
truth and his vital message vitalizes. Missionary incident 
tingles with human interest. 

4. The preacher with the missionary ideal will select 
themes which have missionary value, and will find modern 
duty in old texts. This will increase his power. Those who 
accept the responsibility of going into all the world under 
the Commission are likely to find themselves under neces- 
sity of carrying a gospel which will do the deed. The 
missionary ideal will do more to eliminate trivial themes 
from the pulpit than anything I know. A British war cor- 
respondent says that one effect of the war was that it has 
"spoilt the people for little themes and for dilettante preach- 



THE MISSIONARY IDEAL 19 

merits." Face to face with spiritual need and desperate 
human situations, preachers would not discuss "the mod- 
ern novel," nor "evolution," nor "Casey at the bat," but 
would be driven to the minister's essential message, Christ 
crucified, the hope and immediate help of the man who wants 
him. In like manner the man who gets a lost world on his 
heart — gets heathenism with its ignorance, superstition and 
depravity, the papal fields with ignorance and degradation — 
will find himself harking back to the gospel of the cross 
which alone can regenerate, transform and reinvigorate 
depleted moral manhood. Thousands of sinners at home 
have been saved by the preaching of a gospel which was 
inspired by the foreign mission ideal. 

5. This ideal will put p'assion into your ministry. The 
world does not like cold hash served at eleven o'clock on 
Sunday. The minister who is not at white heat in his quest 
for souls will not lure them to the mercy seat. The preacher 
without passion is the preacher without power. But you 
will not give your life unsparingly to proclaim a half gospel 
nor to a small Christian enterprise. Only little men have 
redhot convictions about small subjects. It takes great 
matters to stir as it takes great matters to make great souls. 
Burning convictions of the truth and a great task, even the 
needs of the race, beget boiling enthusiasm. 



11 
The Value of the Missionary Ideal to a Church 

The missionary ideal has great value for a church. 

1. In the first place it justifies the large expenditure 
which modern churches make for their comfort, convenience 
and work. We hear much about great "plants" for our 
churches. Well, certainly a great plant is not needed if a 
church is not going into a big business for the Lord. Some 
churches have great plants which seem to have been dedi- 
cated to the God of Comfort, and some are just places 
provided to hold audiences for preachers to preach before. 



20 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

Shortly before Reginald Campbell left the City Temple for 
the fold of the Established Church, I saw a report of the 
foreign mission offering of that great church for a twelve 
months. It was $50 ! A certain Baptist church in America 
with a plant costing more than $500,000 gave in a whole 
twelve-months $250 to foreign missions, and enrolled one 
hundred in its Sunday School! A church does not need a 
great plant for such small business. The missionary ideal 
is what that church needs. 

2. The missionary ideal sacredly cherished will increase 
the attendance upon the ministry of any man. I am much 
among the churches, and I have not found in all the rounds 
of my travel a missionary pastor and a missionary church 
which are mourning for congregations. Men are seeking 
opportunities to go into big business. There is fascination 
in it. The preachers and churches which draw the masses 
are missionary. Billy Sunday said that the non-church- 
going members belong to non-giving churches. 

3. The missionary ideal will insure a spiritual church 
membership. Men and women dare not undertake so large 
a task as world conquest for Christ without much crying to 
God in prayer. Human inequality to the great task begets 
a craving for divine help. Companionship and power begot- 
ten by the magnitude of this task steeps the soul of pastor 
and people in spirituality and awakens it in others. When 
Andrew Fuller was broken-hearted over the dearth of con- 
versions in his church, he preached three successive Sundays 
on "The duty of giving the gospel to the heathen," and a 
great revival broke out and multitudes turned to the Saviour. 
Men and women cannot cultivate worldliness when they are 
bent upon bringing the world to Christ. Worldliness 
and waywardness will wither in the presence of sanctified 
devotion to this great ideal, selfishness and covetousness 
will be broken up and the idle will become religiously indus- 
trious. 

4. The missionary ideal is a cure for many petty ills that 
afflict the churches and many ministers. Some time ago a 
company of ministers in conference were hearing first from 



THE MISSIONARY IDEAL 21 

one, then another, of the difficulties they encountered in 
their work. A dolorous meeting it was in which ministerial 
confidences were exchanged concerning pesky deacons, tat- 
tling women, burdensome debts, the frivolity of the young, 
poor congregations, and the like. An old minister, who 
had worn his life out in missionary effort, arose finally, 
and in a trembling but thrilling voice said, "Brethren, raise 
a larger issuer !" and sat down. Missions is that larger 
issue, and it will cure many ills which afflict the churches and 
discourage the preacher. 

5. The missionary ideal is not only a vitalizing principle 
in a church but it insures scope and permanency for the 
preacher's work. We have had much talk about the reflex 
influence of foreign missions. Let me give you an example : 
The ministry of Dr. A. J. Gordon of Boston, and of T. 
DeWitt Talmadge of Brooklyn, just about paralleled each 
other, and covered approximately a quarter of a century. 
Dr. Talmadge with his extraordinary popular gifts set 
himself to the task of building up a congregation and min- 
istering to a local community. He would build up a 
people's church. He possessed almost incomparable gifts 
for such achievement. Devoting himself to his aim, he had 
little to do with the missionary enterprises of his denom- 
ination. Dr. Gordon, on the other hand, set for himself the 
task of building a church through which to give the gospel 
of Christ to the nations of the world. He was a great 
foreign mission spirit. The end of their respective periods 
of service came in the destruction by fire of Dr. Talmadge's 
great meetinghouse, and in the death of Dr. Gordon. The 
great congregation which Dr. Talmadge had built about 
himself, and through which he had devoted his powers 
almost exclusively to a local ministry, did not have vitality 
enough to build another place of worship for itself and the 
community. Dr. Talmadge spent the remainder of his 
ministry in a pulpit in Washington City supplanting the 
old pastor who had by enlisting his people in the For- 
eign Mission enterprise, built a great church. Dr. Gordon's 
church, with the pastor in his grave, maintained itself for 



22 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

continued and great local service, while keeping up foreign 
mission contributions at the rate of $20,000 a year. These 
two pastorates illustrate a great truth and one which churches 
and ministers ought not to miss. The great churches of 
the South and their pastors illustrate the value of the mis- 
sionary ideal for both the church and the pastor. Count 
them over and the truth of this will be obvious. 



in 

The Value of the Missionary Ideal to the Denomination 

There are benefits which the denomination shares when 
the missionary ideal is cultivated, as there are penalties 
which it must inevitably suffer if it is neglected. 

1. In the first place the missionary ideal will insure 
the principles of the denomination. There is no way to 
guarantee the propagation and preservation of denomina- 
tional principles except by planting them. So far as Bap- 
tists are concerned they have not hedged their principles 
about with ecclesiastical protection. These principles can- 
not be protected by defensive tactics. If we would save 
ourselves as a denomination, we must save others. If we 
would save our principles, we must sow them. The heart 
which the gospel regenerates is the only safe keeping 
place for the gospel. Those who know its power to save, 
believe it too precious to be lost. You cannot keep the 
truth pure apart from the missionary use of it. Personally, 
I have never believed that musty sermon illustration which 
recites how a grain of wheat had been found in an Egyp- 
tian tomb, where wrapped with a corpse it had lain for 
two thousand years, and unwrapped and planted, it sprouted 
and grew a harvest. That is both unnatural history and 
unethical illustration. There never was a grain of wheat 
which could be thus preserved. But suppose you could 
preserve a grain of wheat by sealing it up with a mummy, 
is that the best use you can make of wheat? A grain of 
wheat planted in good soil two thousand years ago and 



THE MISSIONARY IDEAL 23 

its natural product planted through the successive seasons, 
would by this time give every man, woman, and child in 
the world a barrel of flour. That is better than preserving 
one grain of wheat. It is true of the gospel. It was given 
not to be hoarded but to be heralded. Truth is prolific 
when missionary use is made of it. 

"Good more communicated, more abundant grows, 
The giver not impoverished but enriched the more." 

2. The missionary ideal gives to the denomination in- 
spirational history. It has been said that the negro race 
is handicapped by the fact that it has no great history, and 
that the Indians are handicapped in that they have no future 
to inspire them. Certainly Baptists have a history. Along 
the course of the centuries stand out great granite char- 
acters who are the inspiration of all who read. Who can 
tell how much the denomination has been enriched by such 
missionary characters as Carey, the Judsons, by Yates, 
Graves and others? But we are not living in the past. 
I heard an Oklahoman say that "Oklahomans are not try- 
ing to live up to the prestige of their grandfathers, but 
that they are trying to make prestige for their grandchil- 
dren." It is our business to make inspiring and heroic 
characters for the future. By the cultivation of che mis- 
sionary ideal, the denomination will make heroes who shall 
inspire our people to-morrow. Theodore Parker, the critic 
and heretic that he was, said that if the missionary enter- 
prise had never done anything but make Judson, all that 
had been put into it would be justified. 

3. Of course, there is no other way for us to increase 
our numbers than by the cultivation of the missionary ideal. 
It is by this means that the denomination is to become a 
real world power. We doom ourselves to provincialism 
and ultimate obscurity if we fail to extend our lines to the 
nations and make converts to our faith everywhere. We 
grow only as we go. But in multiplying our numbers, we 
shall multiply our wealth, our strength and our influence. 



24 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

Each year of missionary progress marks increased mo- 
mentum for the enterprise. 

There is a place in the world for a people of our faith. 
The world needs what the Baptists have to give. Whole 
nations are to-day struggling toward the light and seeking 
to grasp principles which Baptists have enunciated more 
clearly and held more consistently than any other people. 
The nations want and need these principles, and their want 
and need add urgency and create responsibility for Bap- 
tists in the execution of the Commission and the cultivation 
of the missionary ideal. 

The preacher, the church and the denomination will find 
a value in a missionary ideal which cannot be found else- 
where. Without this ideal and the benefits which it confers, 
the preacher dooms himself to mediocrity, the church to 
a famished and feeble life, and the denomination to an in- 
glorious future. 



CHAPTER II 

THE HOME BASE 



THE home base of foreign missions is constituted of 
the individual Christians, the churches, the Christian 
organizations, the material resources and the spiritual assets 
of our home Christianity which can be depended on for the 
projection of the missionary enterprise to the uttermost 
parts of the earth. The base is strong or weak in propor- 
tion to the dependability of these elements in the Chris- 
tianity of the home land for the purposes of this enterprise. 
The home task of the foreign mission agencies is to 
strengthen the home base by increasing the reliability of 
these elements. It is the necessary expenditure of effort 
and money upon this part of the foreign mission task that 
constitutes much the larger part of the expense of foreign 
mission administration. The actual expenses of the purely 
foreign mission administration is a comparatively small 
part of the foreign board's expenditure of money. The 
larger cost of administration is that which is necessary in 
order to create and keep up a reliable home base. Con- 
sidering the circumstances, this is money well spent, but, 
if giving to foreign missions were more voluntary, there 
could be a great saving in expense. If evangelical Chris- 
tianity's present resources were wholly and immediately 
available, we could probably, under present world conditions, 
and in the face of the opportunity now presented in the 
mission fields, in one generation, duplicate on the foreign 
field the total church membership of the home churches 
without increasing the cost of administration. We would 
thus have constituted a double base from which the ad- 
vancing lines of missionary conquest could converge on 

25 



26 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

the diminishing heathenism and soon take our positions 
for the final siege. 

Christianity's holdings here ought to represent the 
strength of its foreign mission base. But, alas ! such is not 
the case. Many of our churches give nothing even of 
material support to this enterprise; many of the members 
of those churches which report contributions give nothing; 
and probably one-half of those members who give do not 
give half as much as they ought to give for a cause so 
commanding as foreign missions. The Home Base Com- 
mission of the Edinburgh Conference, after canvassing 
a mass of data, records this conclusion: "It is probably 
well within the truth to say that nine-tenths of the funds 
raised in the United States for foreign missions are con- 
tributed by one-tenth of the members of the Protestant 
bodies, the remaining nine-tenths of the members giving 
the other tenth. This statement is accepted as true by 
several of the leading denominations." The case is not 
now as bad as that among Baptists, but there are still many 
delinquent churches and church members. 

With such defects in the home base threatening the success 
of the whole enterprise, there is no higher order of mission- 
ary service or campaign strategy than this of more thor- 
oughly constituting this base. This work has its difficulties 
no less formidable than those which confront us on the for- 
eign field, and to overcome them, labor, money, courage, and 
patience will be required. Who among us has realized the 
vast areas of our American Christianity which are yet 
uncultivated and fruitless? Millions are to-day starving 
for the Bread of Life, while vast and productive sections 
of the home field yield not a loaf to stay their consuming 
hunger. Many strong churches and more capable indi- 
viduals stretch forth no hand of relief. Our churches 
represent potential missionary resources which are unde- 
veloped while missionary triumphs are shortened for the 
lack of adequate supplies. To render this fertile field 
fruitful of foreign mission resources there is demand for 
an order of work which is hard and expensive. It is of the 



THE HOME BASE 2J 

nature of digging the stumps and ditches and of long and 
faithful cultivation of the soil before the harvest can be 
realized. Many roots of prejudice must be cast out, some 
natures must be plowed deep, the mellowing, softening 
showers of grace must be invoked and the fertilizing meth- 
ods of New Testament teaching and missionary instruction 
must be used. What a task! And yet how abundantly 
worth while! It is as important to the foreign mission 
enterprise to make a reliable home base as it is to press 
the campaign itself. It would be a waste and cause hurtful 
reaction to put all the effort in the campaign abroad and 
neglect the matter of strengthening sentiment, enlisting 
support and assembling resources at home. Undeveloped 
and stingy church members more than the alleged extrava- 
gance of mission boards are the cause of unnecessary ad- 
ministrative expense. 

II 

We have in America a potential home base for evan- 
gelical Christianity. 

1. We have a potential racial element in our Ameri- 
can home base. The Anglo-Saxon man is constitutionally 
aggressive, pioneering, adventurous. He experiments, in- 
vents, discovers, colonizes, civilizes, educates. He has set 
forward the frontiers of commerce, material comfort, 
moral reform and social order in a manner which distin- 
guishes and immortalizes him. Apply to the Anglo-Saxon 
nature the experience, the heightening of power, the vis- 
ion and the propulsion of evangelical Christian faith, and 
then arouse in him a normal missionary passion, and his 
spiritual ventures will know no bounds; he will have no 
rivals. The American is the freest, the boldest, the most 
daring type of the Anglo-Saxon. When evangelical faith 
is fully purified and missionary zeal is fully aroused among 
American Christians, they will constitute such a human 
base for the missionary enterprise as it has never had in 
any land or age. From American schools must come those 



28 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

who shall carry evangelical Christianity to the ends of the 
earth. 

2. We have here the possibility of such a material base 
as evangelical Christianity has never had, and probably 
can not have in any other land from which this Christianity 
is projected. The per capita wealth and the per capita 
wage of the evangelical church-member in America is un- 
equaled by those of the devotee of any religion outside of 
America. If we could witness an increase of material 
resources for the missionary enterprise commensurate with 
the accumulation of American fortunes, we could finance 
the enterprise as easily as we build railroads, and on a 
scale of equal magnitude. We have marvelous possibilities 
for a great home base in the wealth of our land, and we 
are challenged by missionary opportunity and need to 
make our Christian men of wealth see that this enterprise 
has the first and the largest claim upon their benevolences. 
Foreign missions is the fundamental and productive Chris- 
tian enterprise. Millions put into libraries, museums, art 
galleries and the like for the advancement of civilization 
is like spraying the fruit compared with the horticultural 
work and care in producing it. Books and art and other 
aesthetic agencies are themselves the products of Christianity, 
and the man who would give his f ellowmen the benefits of 
these can do it in larger measure by giving them the gospel. 
The nations to whom we give the gospel will get and pro- 
duce their own arts. Many of the nations which present 
needy foreign missionary fields have glorious art, but it 
has left them in moral decay. Our larger gifts, therefore, 
should go to this primary and productive work. More and 
more churches and Christian leaders should seek to com- 
mand for this cause the unequaled wealth of American 
Christians. We have scarcely tapped the possible resources 
already in the hands of American Christians. 

3. We have in our American church membership the 
material for a great numerical base. There are 25,000,- 
000 church members in the United States, or one in four of 
the whole population including men, women, children and 



THE HOME BASE 29 

babies. What an army to support and conduct our Chris- 
tian campaign if only all were, as their profession implies, 
really under orders ! If the foreign mission enterprise has 
reached its present proportions with such fractional sup- 
port as it has received, what are the possibilities for it 
if these millions of church members with all they possess 
and command could be relied upon. Professor Thomas 
C. Johnson has said truly, "In ordering the constitution 
of the church God made a missionary society; every mem- 
ber of the church by virtue of his church membership is 
a member of this missionary society and stands pledged 
to do his utmost as such. The obligation therefore to fulfill 
this pledge is imperative and inclusive." The anti-mis- 
sionary or the o-missionary individual who defends church 
sovereignty is a heretic after the last commandment of 
our Lord. The only serious indictment that can be brought 
against orthodoxy as a force in missions is that its evan- 
gelistic products can not uniformly be relied upon as mis- 
sionary factors. To this incongruity the defenders of the 
faith must address themselves, and when it is removed, 
evangelical Christianity will vindicate itself in triumphant 
missionary achievement. This defect is the weak place in 
the home base at present and the chief cause of embar- 
rassment to the missionary enterprise. The statistical table 
in the associational minute is a good index to the soundness 
and sincerity of the faith of the churches. 

4. America presents unique possibilities for a home 
base in its potential missionary message. The primary 
reason for going on a mission to the non-Christian nations 
is found in the message which was given us to carry to 
them, and this message is an indispensable equipment for 
missionary service. All the sending and all the going is 
for the purpose of carrying this message. The man or group 
of men who are without this message are without a mission. 
Responsibility for the missionary enterprise rests upon those 
who have a gospel to propagate. A profession of evan- 
gelical orthodoxy is an acknowledgment of the most bind- 
ing missionary obligation. It is in this fact that America 



30 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

should constitute the strongest base for evangelical foreign 
missions. Not only does a larger number of our people 
hold this faith by a voluntary choice, but evangelical Chris- 
tian faith has here fewer handicaps, and is freer from 
diluting elements than in any other land of the globe. There 
can not be found in any other land an equal number of 
men and women who believe with the same confidence that 
American Christians believe in the unique inspiration of 
the Scriptures, the miraculous birth, the deity and the 
vicarious atonement of Christ, the reality of the new birth 
and the continuity of moral law throughout the whole 
career of the soul in two worlds. This faith constitutes a 
potential missionary message, and creates peculiar mis- 
sionary obligation. This truth ought to be brought home to 
American Christians until all orthodoxy becomes a reliable 
part of the home base, and by such augmentation of re- 
sources, the campaign is strengthened to the uttermost 
outpost. 

5. Evangelical Christianity has in America a strate- 
gical position for a home base. We hold here a continent 
of marvelous resources, which lies peacefully between the 
world's two great oceans, the turbulent nations, and be- 
tween the corroding Christianity of Europe and the virgin 
mission fields of the East. Our isolation is great enough 
to insure the national type and yet we hold a position favor- 
able to service for other nations. In security, serenity and 
high self-containment we look upon the world's tumult 
and need with collected wits and the bounties of nature and 
of grace at our disposal. From such a base we can dis- 
pense our gospel treasures if we have the heart to do it. 

in 

The fact that we have in America a potential base of 
such significance, and that circumstances conspire to render 
the foreign mission campaign so largely dependent upon 
this base, suggest that the strengthening of this base is a 
foreign mission work of high rank. k Whatever is essential 



THE HOME BASE 31 

to the enterprise is an important part of it. There is noth- 
ing connected with this world enterprise more important 
than the work of completing the task of converting some 
twenty-five million Christians in the evangelical churches 
of America into reliable foreign mission assets. What then 
are some of the things to be done and points to be guarded 
in order that we may render the home base adequate and 
reliable for an expanding and winning campaign? 

1. The task demands, of course, a high order of con- 
structive Christian and missionary statesmanship. Sanity, 
tactfulness and courage are indispensable qualifications in 
those who are to enlist, train and lead these hosts in a 
mighty campaign which shall carry this holy war to victory. 
Mr. John R. Mott in his "The Present World Situation" 
quotes the London Spectator to the effect that there is "one 
feature in the present aspect of the world which is most 
unusual, and that is the contrast between the magnitude of 
events occurring around us and the smallness, or rather, 
the second-rateness of the men supposed to guide them." 
Mr. Mott elaborates that statement and applies it to the 
missionary leadership which deals with the many problems 
on the foreign field. But the home base also has its prob- 
lems which make demands for statesmanship on the part 
of pastors and other leaders whose task it is to increase its 
efficiency. To shape the situation at home, there is need 
of men who love the cause above all personal whims and 
personal ambitions, men of unconquerable and genuine 
missionary passion, and who in singleness of eye for the 
cause will neither play to lower nor upper galleries. The 
need is for missionary statesmen versus the official com- 
mander, versus the politician, versus the demagogue. All 
these have afflicted the missionary cause at one time or 
another in one place or another. We cannot back an im- 
perialistic program such as is outlined in the Commission 
without resources of wisdom and consecrated diplomacy. 
American Baptists have had men who exemplified these 
elements of leadership. They still need such men. The 
magnitude of the task, the proportion to which our mis- 



32 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

sionary operations have grown, the number and personnel 
of the forces to be led, enlisting, training, developing, and 
leading these home forces; and the varied problems to be 
solved, including as they do financing the work, economy 
of administration, unity of the forces, the conservation of 
denominational integrity, questions of Christian comity, and 
many others, call for men with more than new eras in their 
purpose and empires in their brain. 

There must be a more comprehensive grasp of the home 
situation and a more minute application of attention to the 
matters which affect the efficiency and reliability of the 
base. There are magnitudes in the problem of the home 
base; there are millions of individuals scattered over the 
continent to be incorporated into the supporting forces of 
the enterprise. It is not an easy mental feat to grasp a 
million units, but it is even more difficult when the figures 
stand for so many individual, independent Baptists of 
varying mind, holding membership in independent church 
groups more or less loosely related, distributed in two gen- 
eral conventions, some fifty state organizations and nearly 
fifteen hundred district associations. To put in operation 
plans which will after a while reach every one of these indi- 
vidual Baptists and each unit of organization, and build 
up out of them a home base in which every part shall be 
dependable and contribute relatively its maximum of strength 
to the whole, is a mission challenge to thoughtful men 
among us. 

Such a scheme of base building must be projected and 
worked as will insure a definite utilization of every unit in 
the home Christianity and organization for the specific sup- 
port of the foreign mission enterprise ; and the work which 
accomplishes this must proceed so orderly and intelligently 
that we may know what progress has been made, and what 
at any time remains to be done. Haphazard effort may get 
helpful results in particular instances, but can never build 
up a base strong at every point and affording a constant 
reliable support to the great enterprise; and the enterprise 
itself can not be projected with confidence and steady cour- 



THE HOME BASE 33 

age so long as home support fluctuates and is uncertain. 
2. This is axiomatical; but what is the remedy which 
skill must apply? Are there any guiding principles for 
the construction of a reliable home base and the provision 
of steady supplies for the campaign? It should have oc- 
curred to us long ago that the Scriptures contain some 
specifications for base building, and for the relief of the 
chief embarrassment which has confused the enterprise. 
As a matter of fact the Commission which orders the cam- 
paign, and the inspired history of its early triumphs, con- 
tain specifications which cover our baffling difficulty. The 
Commission enjoins a message in the words, "Preach the 
gospel to every creature/' and it prescribes a missionary 
duty for those who believe in the words, "Teaching them to 
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." 
Doubtless these words include the duty of teaching con- 
verts a proper observance of the ordinances and the close 
guarding of the gospel message, but they include more than 
this. This Commission is first of all, and most of all, a 
missionary edict, and the words hint at the method. The 
teaching here is not intellectual, theoretic, cultural; it is 
practical. Preachers are commanded to instruct their con- 
verts in how to do the thing which the Commission com- 
mands. They must, of course, apply the best mission mo- 
tives, but they must also apply the best mission methods. 
This task with the converts is not finished until these are 
engaged in "doing the truth" and in observing the best way 
of promoting it. A Scriptural method of church finance 
sustains an essential relation to this work of "teaching them 
to observe all things." Individual stewardship, systematic, 
regular, proportionate giving are observances which are 
vital to the execution of the Commission, and failure to 
teach the Scriptural observance here has probably cost the 
missionary cause as serious shortening of its victories as 
any dereliction of which Christian leaders are guilty. Care- 
lessness and indifference to a matter so vital to the scheme 
of world evangelization is to be classed with irregularity 
concerning one of the ordinances or other observance speci- 



34 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

fied by the Scriptures. The efficiency of the home base 
demands that a thoroughly comprehensive plan shall be 
executed to place every church member on the list of regular, 
systematic, proportionte givers, and that this plan shall be 
worked so orderly that the results may at any time be 
checked up, and the remaining task distinctly located. This 
work is in progress and already gratifying results have been 
secured. It must be continued with increased vigor and 
orderliness. 

3. To increase the efficiency of the home base the chan- 
nels of approach to the churches, even the feeblest and 
remotest, must be kept open for the general mission agencies. 
This is not only essential to the life of the agencies them- 
selves, but to the missionary life of the churches at home. 
These open channels afford opportunity for constant mis- 
sionary revitalization of the home base. The general mis- 
sion board is a purveyor of ideas and ideals ; it kindles mis- 
sionary passion, expands vision and creates a missionary at- 
mosphere ; it garners and imparts information, fosters large 
view and familiarizes the churches with a great program; 
it excites co-operative sympathy and stimulates a conscious- 
ness of denominational power. These things are possible 
through the literature of the Board, correspondence, personal 
visits of representatives, etc. By such means the general 
agencies are penetrating the masses who compose, or ought 
to compose, the home base, and imparting inspiration and a 
missionary mind and impulse to those who are providen- 
tially confined to isolated districts and have little oppor- 
tunity to touch or be touched by the great currents of mod- 
ern religious thought and life. While the boards draw from 
the people and bear their gifts to sections of need to which 
they are consigned, they ought also to be charged with the 
duty of giving back to the churches information and inspi- 
ration gathered through opportunity for larger outlook, in 
order that the lives of our people may be enriched and their 
missionary life fed. This form of work is essential to the 
efficiency of the home base, and it can not be done by any 
one of the more local agencies in the home organization 



THE HOME BASE 35 

alone. The churches ought to be open to all denominational 
agencies. Those which have been given an opportunity to 
collect information and are inflamed with zeal for a given 
enterprise ought to be given the opportunity to tell what 
they know and feel. The mission board in its proper func- 
tion is not so much a getter of money as a begetter of mis- 
sionary intelligence, purpose, and passion. 

4. Given information about the great causes and proper 
motives for their support, we ought to trust the individual 
conscience to give discriminatingly. The ideal giver is a 
Christian who knows and feels the claim of the respective 
objects which have a right to appeal to his benevolence, and 
whose conscience acts automatically, that is, from the in- 
herent force of knowledge and love within him, and not 
under the mechanical manipulation of some one whose in- 
terest it is to boost a certain job. Until our people are 
informed concerning the respective claims of the great Chris- 
tian enterprises, they are liable to become the victims of 
the manipulator, sometimes self-appointed, and make dis- 
proportionate gifts to subordinate objects. 

The Spirit of Christ, who administers missions, should 
be so palpable in the home constituency that missions 
would become the normal Christian activity. A Christian 
ought to have as restless a passion for lost nations as a lost 
man has for the Saviour when the Spirit has convinced 
him of sin. The effort to produce such a Christian life at 
home is a necessary part of the work which has for its 
end the making of Christians abroad. When eight million 
Baptists in America are enlightened, enlisted, and their per- 
sonal powers and possessions are made the assets of the 
foreign mission enterprise, we shall have a home base which 
will support our advancing lines until we have carried the 
gospel of Christ into all lands and the signs of final victory 
appear. 



CHAPTER III 

THE BAPTIST PROGRAM FOR EUROPE * 
I 

r A Word about the Origin of the London Conference 

IN the spring of 1919 the Foreign Mission Board carried 
up to the Southern Baptist Convention which met in 
Atlanta, Georgia, the following inquiry: 

"This convention should face with courage the ques- 
tion of its obligation to take some part in the religious re- 
construction of Europe. The need there is too great, and 
Southern Baptist obligation is too apparent for this body- 
to ignore them. According to the best psychology of the 
situation, there is thought to be opportunity in Europe for 
a genuine and radical transformation of the whole religious 
situation if evangelical Christianity will enter quickly doors 
of opportunity which the guns of war have jarred open. 
Shall your Foreign Mission Board set itself to the task of 
entering these doors and exercising a spiritual ministry to 
the torn and agitated hearts of men and women in France, 
Belgium, and elsewhere, as God's Spirit shall lead?" 

To the above inquiry the Convention made reply : 

"With respect to our 'obligation to take some part in the 
religious reconstruction of Europe/ that we do most heartily 
desire the Board to take steps as speedily as circumstances 
make possible to ascertain fully the situation and how we 
can best meet our duty in regard to it. Adopting the lan- 

*This address delivered before the South Carolina Baptist State 
Convention was published by order of that body, but because of the 
historic significance of the meeting to which it refers, it is thought 
proper to include it in these Messages and thus preserve it in more 
permanent form. 

36 



EUROPEAN PROGRAM 37 

guage of their inquiry, we do 'instruct our Foreign Mission 
Board carefully to spy out the land and, when the engineer- 
ing corps have made their report, to go up and possess it.' 
To this end we authorize our Board to expend whatever 
funds are necessary to the full information needed for most 
wisely doing our part in Europe and the rest of Russia. 
We hope that by another year we shall already be in such 
of these countries as God's Spirit shall indicate, by the 
results of the proposed investigation, that He desires us to 
occupy." 

Following the Atlanta Convention and in the summer 
of 1919, Dr. Z. T. Cody and I were appointed by the For- 
eign Mission Board to make a Missionary and Reconstruc- 
tion Survey of Europe and the Near East. On this trip 
we were accompanied by Dr. Everett Gill, then a missionary 
of the Foreign Mission Board in Italy but temporarily in the 
homeland. Upon our arrival in London it was agreed with 
the Baptist leaders there that, upon finishing the tour and 
survey, the Commission would return to London and report 
conditions, observations and conclusions. We arrived in 
London on the return trip from the Continent and the Near 
East the last of January, 1920, and made our report. Among 
other things, the Commission suggested that it would not 
be practicable, in the face of conditions on the Continent, 
to hold a Baptist World Alliance in Prague during the 
summer of 1920, as had been announced, or even in 1921. 
General conditions in Europe were too disturbed and uncer- 
tain for this and facilities for handling large tourist parties 
were utterly inadequate. Our view of the matter was ac- 
cepted by the London brethren and we were requested to 
report these conclusions to the American members of the 
Baptist World Alliance Executive Committee on reaching 
America. This we did. 

We were certain, however, that need and opportunity in 
Europe could not wait a favorable hour for a meeting of 
the World Alliance. Consequently Dr. J. H. Franklin of 
the Foreign Mission Society of the Northern Baptist Con- 



38 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

vention, was invited to come to Richmond for a Conference. 
The invitation was accepted, the conference held, and before 
it adjourned a program for a European Conference was pre- 
pared. It was agreed that we would present it to the Boards 
at home, and I was requested to submit it to Baptist leaders 
in London. Both the Foreign Mission Society of the North- 
ern Baptist Convention and the Foreign Mission Board of 
the Southern Baptist Convention approved this program 
heartily, as did the brethren in London. Upon joint request 
of the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Con- 
vention and the Foreign Mission Society of the Northern 
Baptist Convention, Dr. J. H. Shakespeare invited repre- 
sentatives of the Baptist organizations of Europe and ar- 
ranged for the Conference in London, July 19-23, 1920. 

At the Atlanta Convention of which instruction had been 
asked concerning undertaking work in Europe, the Corre- 
sponding Secretary of the Foreign Mission Board offered 
the following resolution: 

"Resolved, That a committee of five messengers to the 
Convention be appointed to prepare greetings of this Con- 
vention of Southern Baptists to the people of 'like precious 
faith with us' scattered abroad in all nations; 

"That the committee be composed of E. Y. Mullins, L. R. 
Scarborough, J. B. Gambrell, Z. T. Cody, and William 
Ellyson." 

In offering the above resolution it was explained that 
Southern Baptists, having declared non-alliance with those 
of contrary beliefs and policies, should seek a closer fellow- 
ship with those of their own household of faith, and that 
while greeting them in the Lord, we should put forth such 
definition of our faith as would help them to realize the 
common bonds of truth between us, and to help others who 
may not wear our name, but do believe the same things, 
to establish their identity with us. The above committee 
prepared an exceptionally satisfactory address and its trans- 
lation into many tongues and circulation in many lands 
provoked a wide and approving response, brought Southern 



EUROPEAN PROGRAM 39 

Baptists to the attention of the Baptists of the world, and 
helped to make the London Conference what it was by call- 
ing attention to the bond of a common faith held by those 
who were in attendance. 

I may pause here to say that while Dr. Cody was not 
present at the Conference, he influenced this meeting greatly 
by his part in the preparation of the Fraternal Address, his 
advice concerning the necessity for such a conference, and 
his support while in Europe of certain administrative prin- 
ciples which found recognition in the Conference. 

Dr. George W. Truett of Texas and the speaker were 
appointed by the Foreign Mission Board to represent it in 
this Conference, and early in July proceeded to London to 
meet our brethren from many lands. In all the triumphs 
of his great ministry Dr. Truett has not rendered the world 
or his denomination a greater service. 

No man could have been more fortunate than I in the 
associates given me for the responsible work which engaged 
Dr. Cody, Dr. Truett and myself on these representative 
visits to Europe. To my dying day I shall be grateful to 
these wise and devoted men for the service which they have 
rendered the great cause to which I have given my life, 
and in which the denomination must always find the highest 
expression of its unselfish Christian passion. Dr. Gill was 
of great service to Dr. Cody and me in making the survey. 
Dr. Truett and I were much strengthened by the counsel 
and support which Drs. Gambrell and Mullins gave us in 
and during the London Conference. 



11 

The Personnel of the Conference 

Even the briefest sketch of this the most significant Con- 
ference of Baptist people in modern times should make 
prominent mention of Dr. John Clifford, who with dignity 
and yet with consummate grace and courtesy presided over 
the meetings ; and of Dr. J. H. Shakespeare, who as Secre- 



4 o MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

tary of the Conference and by faithful work in advance 
made it possible, and by his resourcefulness and unfailing 
kindness to the representatives during the Conference, placed 
all under obligation to him; and Drs. J. H. Rushbrooke 
and Chas. A. Brooks, whose report of European conditions 
was the chief and reliable basis for action by the Conference. 
Seventy-two representative Baptists were present from 
various countries as follows : 

England: Dr. John Clifford, Dr. J. H. Shakespeare, Dr. 
W. T. Whitley, Rev. J. H. Rushbrooke, Rev. D. Witton 
Jenkins, Rev. E. H. Brown, Rev. C. T. Byford, Dr. J. W. 
Ewing, Mr. J. Wallis Goddard, Dr. G. P. Gould, Miss Mar- 
garet Hardy, Rev. E. E. Hayward, Mrs. Russell James, Mr. 
R. Klickman, Rev. Gilbert Laws, Rev. James Mursell, Rev. 
A. M. Ritchie, Mrs. C. S. Rose, Rev. C. E. Wilson, Rev. 
John Wilson; Scotland: Mr. Adam Nimmo, Mr. W. T. 
Oldrieve, Rev. Thomas Stewart; Ireland: Rev. J. D. Gil- 
more, Rev. R. Hodgett ; Australia: Rev. T. E. Ruth ; Austria: 
Rev. August Wiegand; Belgium: Rev. O. Valet; Czecho- 
slovakia: Rev. J. Tolar, Rev. F. Kolator; Denmark: Rev. 
Peter Olsen; Esthonia: Rev. Adam Podin, Mrs. Podin; 
Finland: Rev. Erik Jansson, Rev. I. S. Ostermann; France: 
Rev. R. Dubarry, Rev. Ph. Vincent, Rev. Hanmer Jenkins ; 
Germany: Prediger B. Weerts, Prediger F. W. Simoleit, 
Missions-direktor K. Mascher; Holland: Rev. J. W. Wee- 
hink; Hungary: Rev. A. Udvarnoki, Rev. Stephen Orosz, 
Mrs. Orosz; Italy: Rev. D. G. Whittinghill, Rev. W. Kem- 
me Landels; Latvia: Pastor J. A. Frey; Norway: Rev. P. 
Stainsen, Rev. A. Ohrn; Poland: Rev. F. Brauer, Rev. K. 
W. Strzelec; Roummia: Rev. C. R. Igrisan, Rev. C. Ado- 
rian; Spain: Rev. G. T. Vickman; Sweden: Rev. C. E. 
Benander, Rev. J. Bystrom, Rev. N. J. Nordstrom; Can- 
ada: Dr. O. C. S. Wallace; Northern Baptist Convention, 
U. S. A.: Rev. C. A. Brooks, Mr. Mornay Williams, Dr. J. 
H. Franklin, Dr. Emory W. Hunt, Rev. O. Brouillette, Dr. 
Arthur Fowler; Southern Baptist Convention, [/. S. A.: 
Dr. J. F. Love, Dr. George W. Truett, Dr. J. B. Gambrell, 
President E. Y. Mullins, D. D., Dr. H. C. Wayman. Almost 



EUROPEAN PROGRAM 41 

without exception these were seasoned men, some of them 
veterans. Dr. John Clifford, the dauntless champion of re- 
ligious liberty and disestablishment in England, and Dr. 
J. B. Gambrell, the religious Commoner of America, were 
there, both of them still full of mettle and champing the bit 
at the age of eighty-four and seventy-nine years, respectively. 
Men were there who bore in their bodies the marks of the 
Lord Jesus; men from Siberian exile, and from many im- 
prisonments for the gospel's sake. There was not a dainty 
man in the bunch, but many grizzled and inured soldiers 
of the cross were there to hold counsel of war, lay the lines 
of battle and return again to the trenches. Heroes were 
there from Jugo-Slavia, from Hungary, Roumania, Czecho- 
slovakia, Poland, Austria, Germany, Latvia, Esthonia, Lith- 
uania, and Ireland and Scotland, and Belgium and Denmark, 
etc. They were there from lonely and isolated posts where 
they had raised the flag of our faith in defiance of the 
powers of this world, but now flushed with high expecta- 
tion of reenforcement and radiant in the new joy of fellow- 
ship with the stronger groups of their brethren. 

I count it one of the highest privileges of my life to have 
sat through those memorable hours of conference, prayer, 
and praise with these men of many lands and many tongues, 
but of a common faith. If I am ever the same man again, 
I shall descend from the heights of rare experience and be 
disobedient to the vision which was vouchsafed unto me. 
One is embarrassingly conscious of severe limitations in any 
attempt to communicate the experience of these days of 
high privilege to those of his brethren who were not there. 
I feel as one who had been on a mount with God and had 
descended to the plains where the fog lies thick and chill. 



in 

The Conference Itself 

We must, however, attempt to give you at least a glint 
into the proceedings of this Conference. 



42 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

1. Certain items in the Baptist Program for Europe 
were taken up and referred to Committees and deliberated 
upon, such as Education, Literature, Spheres of Activity 
by the respective boards, Relief and Reconstruction. We 
reviewed the awful and heart-breaking destitution which 
has engulfed multitudes of our brethren and sisters and 
their little ones who in great numbers cry in their hunger 
for fathers who can never hear their cry. Findings on these 
various items were adopted by the Conference and pre- 
sented by the representatives present to their respective 
boards and organizations. 

2. In the discussion of some of the items of the program 
certain questions of administrative policy were brought 
under consideration. Two of these especially called forth 
frank and positive speech, though, I think, in a spirit of 
true brotherliness. The candor and courtesy which are 
essential to the behavior of Christian men characterized the 
Conference. The point was raised whether the Baptist 
World Alliance should be recognized as an administrative 
organization and the Baptist Program for Europe should 
head up in one place in Europe, or be referred to the For- 
eign Mission Agencies now operated and controlled by the 
respective Baptist groups and responsible to them. The 
other point discussed was whether we should recommend a 
cooperation throughout the whole of Europe or a coordi- 
nation of effort which equitably distributes Baptist influence 
over all the countries of Europe but leaves each Board free 
to promote work in accordance with its own policies. The 
representatives of the Foreign Mission Board entertained 
deep, and, we think, mature conviction that each Foreign 
Mission Agency should retain its own administrative prerog- 
atives and remain directly responsible to its own constituency 
and, in accordance with this, that the most effective co- 
operation is a coordination of our Baptist forces in such a 
way as to cover the whole territory and secure concert of 
action without merging function. These two points brought 
on earnest discussion which clarified the thinking of all of us 
on matters of missionary policy and administration. In the 



EUROPEAN PROGRAM 43 

end the latter views prevailed. We rejoice in the confidence 
that Southern Baptists have the privilege of promoting a 
sound missionary policy in their work for Europe and yet 
have the most fraternal relations with all who were repre- 
sented in the Conference. 

3. The spirit which prevailed was a remarkable feature 
of this epochal meeting. It w r as evident from the beginning, 
and grew more evident to the end of the Conference, that 
the men who had gathered were brought together in real 
bonds of brotherhood. Say all you will about fraternities 
and common Christian ties, there is between men of "like 
precious faith" a bond of union, a warm and tender affec- 
tion which does not exist between others. There was a 
consciousness among us all that we had found a true spir- 
itual kinship in the men and women of our faith who had 
come up to the London Conference from their distant 
homes. Under such circumstances there was no forced 
manifestation of affection, no restraint upon discussion, no 
stiff and artificial conventionalities, no guarding of proper- 
ties, but a spontaneous, natural and unhampered fellow- 
ship. In such a fellowship each feels that he is understood 
by the other and that all have common ends to serve. This 
excellent and delightful spirit of the London Conference 
found its natural expression in the unanimous vote which 
was given every report in its final form. This unanimity of 
action included not only the official representatives of the 
Boards, but such visitors as Dr. Gambrell and Dr. Mullins 
who were invited to full participation in the Conference 
and to exercise their Baptist freedom without embarrass- 
ment to themselves or any one else. The spirit in which 
the decisions of the Conference were sought and the 
unanimity in which they were reached inclined those of us 
who were present to the firm belief that the Spirit of God 
validated the actions of this Conference. 



44 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

IV 

The Appeal of the Conference 

There is in this European Program an appeal which I 
feel strongly, and which I believe you will feel if certain 
facts about it are once fixed in your minds. Nothing to 
which I have ever turned my hands for my denomination 
has seemed to me so full of potential blessings for the world 
as this program which we have undertaken to put into effect. 

1. There is, in the first place, repeated here the old ap- 
peal of Europe as a mission field. One of the most sig- 
nificant of all passages in the New Testament which bears 
upon the missionary program in its universal and ageless 
aspects, is that which is recorded in the 16th chapter of 
the Acts. The call of Macedonia and the response of the 
Apostle Paul to that call was the appeal of and response to 
Europe's needs and Europe's urgent and exceptional im- 
portance as a field for evangelistic effort. In that incident 
is a divine emphasis upon the importance of missionary 
strategy in the propagation of the gospel. Europe can not 
be ignored if we would evangelize the world. It is crucial 
to the universalization of the Gospel of Jesus and to peace 
and righteousness on earth. There is, too, significance in 
the fact that about the time Paul was crossing the iEgean 
and beginning the missionary conquest of Europe at Philippi, 
the soldiers of Claudius were landing in the neighborhood 
of the place where this London Conference was held. 
Claudius was a sort of forerunner of civilization and an 
unconscious agent in the hands of Providence making 
straight paths and opening up highways for the feet of 
those who were to bear the glad tidings of peace. Paul 
with his gospel, responding to the call of Macedonia, started 
in upon the conquest of Europe and was marching toward 
the seats of Empire and of civilization. 

In the physical needs and distress and the greater mis- 
sionary opportunities which Europe presents to-day there 
is an appeal as truly mandatory and which transcends the 



EUROPEAN PROGRAM 45 

Macedonia call. Now again God is by circumstance sig- 
nifying the time for a new evangelistic campaign on the 
Continent of Europe and in Europe's need is again voicing 
the prayer, "Come over and help us." It is a thrilling expe- 
rience to realize that the privilege is given us, even us, of 
repeating in our day, and on larger lines, the acts of the 
apostle, God crowns a hundred years of Baptist missionary 
service and achievement with the privilege of undertaking 
a sublimely important and potential piece of missionary 
service. 

2. / name as a second appeal this: The London Confer- 
ence has given to the Baptists of the World a real Baptist 
World Alliance. That which we have heretofore called 
the "Baptist World Alliance" has been an occasional high 
peak of fellowship and of inspiration; this has been worth 
while, but the Alliance left us no tasks to perform and 
made no program. An alliance, even of those of com- 
mon faith, is ineffectual if it has not for its purpose some 
great work to be done. Soldiers must fight or they will 
fuss. If they are not directed to follow up the enemy, 
they will fall out among themselves. The idlers in our 
Christian ranks are the disturbers. Sooner or later discord 
breaks out among those who, however much they may have 
in common, have not a common work. It requires a great 
task to insure great fellowship. The hearts of men are 
fused in the passion of great and unselfish service. A chal- 
lenging task and hard work creates a feeling of comrade- 
ship. We have now a real Baptist World Alliance. 

What practical ends do the Baptists of the world hence- 
forth strive for? What have we entered into holy alliance 
to do? 

(a) To bear the burdens one of another. We take up in 
the compassions of Christ and as a sign of fellowship the 
burden of nakedness and starvation under which we find 
the hearts of great numbers of our brethren and sisters in 
Europe breaking. We have said to them that we will 
not feast while you starve ; we will not flaunt extravagance 
and exhibit our vanity while our sisters in Europe are 



46 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

clothed in tatters and shiver under the biting frost of win- 
ter ; we will not spoil our children through indulgence while 
yours cry for bread. We shall repeat the story of Second 
Corinthians and decline to be eased while others are bur- 
dened. We insist upon greater equality in circumstance. 
We will send bread for the hungry and clothing for those 
who are cold. But, more than this, we will warm the hearts 
of our brothers by the response which Christian love makes 
to their necessities. 

(b) We shall release to the ministry of Christ Baptist 
preachers in Europe w T hose hearts are panting for the work 
to which God has called them, but who through poverty 
are now bound down to drudgery of daily toil and are strug- 
gling desperately to give bread to their children while the 
work which they love is being neglected. We will place 
shoes on the feet of other missionaries who without such 
have gone barefooted carrying the good tidings to their 
broken-hearted and broken-spirited countrymen. The 
hearts of these true servants of Christ are hurt quite as 
much because of lost opportunities for advancing the cause 
of Jesus as from having their babies pinched by cold and 
hunger. We shall also further increase the number of those 
who herald the truth by furnishing facilities for the educa- 
tion of young women and young men whom God has called 
but who through these troublous years and for want of 
schools for their training have been compelled to defer 
their hopes. There are scores of such waiting for help to 
realize their vision. 

(c) But perhaps the most significant thing about this 
alliance is, we shall hereafter be able to speak with the 
voice of eight million Baptists to the governments of Europe 
in protest against the persecution of our people and of any 
people for their religious faith and in the interest of religious 
freedom for all men. Rev. J. H. Rushbrooke of London has 
been selected to represent the Baptists of the world with 
this important matter as a primary consideration. Perse- 
cuting priests and conniving officials in Jugo-Slavia and 
Roumania shall be compelled to hear the protests of eight 



EUROPEAN PROGRAM 47 

million Baptists, and many of them will for the first time 
learn what real and thoroughgoing religious liberty is. They 
will find that there is a denomination in the world that asks 
no special favors for itself but does ask absolute religious 
liberty for everybody. They will learn that the Baptist 
people claim something more than toleration, but that they 
do not claim an ounce of peculiar privilege, a penny of 
the people's taxes for any phase of their religious work; 
that they exert no influence upon politicians and legislators 
in their own favor which is not exerted in favor of everybody 
else who is willing to accept common and impartial rights 
with others. 

(d) This Alliance will promote homogeneous faith and 
denominational life throughout the world. Channels of 
communication are being established. Inter-communication 
is going on. It has already become evident that the majority 
of the Baptist people on the Continent of Europe and 
throughout the world are tenaciously holding on to a faith 
and polity either closely alike or exactly identical to the 
faith and polity of Southern Baptists. It has been found 
that the individuals and groups which hold divergent views 
constitute a feeble minority compared with the vast numbers 
who hold and strongly defend a common faith. There has 
been opened up in the Foreign Mission Board rooms a Bur- 
eau of Communications through which literature and cor- 
respondence are sent forth and received, and this is helping 
the scattered members of the denomination to discover Bap- 
tist unity and to strengthen it. It may be expected that 
the Baptists will in the future present to the world a de- 
nominational life in which homogeneity and democracy find 
expression in a positive and constructive program and which 
gathers force and invincibility from these characteristics. 

(e) This actual Baptist World Alliance secures co- 
ordination of effort and makes possible concentrated action 
throughout the whole field of Baptist life and missionary 
activity in Europe. We shall be able by the harmonious 
ordering of our missionary forces to secure the witness to 
our faith in every country in Europe and at the same time 



48 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

effect a close impact of combined Baptist influence at any 
point where the program is imperiled or our people are in 
need of our protection or help. We have a program which 
recognizes autonomy in unity. 

3. Another appeal of this Program is that it inaugurates 
for Europe a new reformation. This to me is a thrilling 
aspect of our new task. Europe presents to the world an 
ecclesiastical Christianity. Europe has never been evan- 
gelized. It has had a military conversion, an ecclesiastical 
conversion, a diplomatic conversion, an intellectual con- 
version; but it has never had an evangelical conversion. 
Paul opened up channels for evangelical Christianity in 
Europe along which for a while flowed the -limpid waters 
of life, but shortly the movement got mixed with worldly 
motives and as a consequence the evangelical conversion 
of Europe was delayed and confounded with the rule of 
the Empire and secular civilization. Pure Christianity has 
never prevailed over large sections of Europe. The thor- 
ough conversion of semi-Christian Europe is to-day mis- 
sionary strategy of the highest order. 

The task of evangelizing Europe has in it some new and 
challenging elements. The channels along which once 
moved the tides of evangelical truth in the countries of 
Europe have themselves become clogged and the truth con- 
taminated. They were originally opened up through fields 
of heathenism. These channels must be reopened in fields 
of semi-Christianity. In many places the miasmas of super- 
stition have settled down upon these original channels and 
in other places the frost of rationalism has fallen from 
high intellectual peaks about European Universities and 
chilled the faith of many. Icicles hang from pulpits where 
tongues of fire are needed. To thaw and purify the poten- 
tial sources of Christianity in Europe is a missionary 
strategy which has to do with the essential Christian mes- 
sage and its messengers who are to carry it throughout the 
world. We must not, in setting ourselves to this task, for- 
get that false forms of Christianity are usually more 
irresistible than stark heathenism. And yet we believe that 



EUROPEAN PROGRAM 49 

the present time lends more encouragement for the accom- 
plishment of this task than any years since Popery first set 
up its autocratic soul-tyranny in the city of Rome, or Greek 
Orthodoxy congealed at Constantinople. There are distinct 
tokens of advantage in pressing this Reformation at this 
time. 

In the first place Europe suffers a broken heart and in her 
sorrow her people have been made to feel a new sense of 
the need of religious reality. If at such a time we can show 
the compassions of Christ for those who suffer and yield 
the practical fruits of Christian benevolence, we will make 
willing hearers for our Christian message. Because of our 
benefactions our missionaries will find a new hospitality to 
the truth. 

In the second place, the old ecclesiastical systems have 
suffered through the ordeal of the War. Thoughts, motives, 
and ideals have mixed in this turmoil and have flowed into 
every nook and corner of Europe. Many thousands of men 
have gotten a taste of a larger world of things, of men and 
ideas, and will no longer be content with such circumscrip- 
tion as Romanism imposes upon its devotees. The old re- 
ligions of Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy have 
failed to meet the needs of men in this awful hour and can 
not adjust themselves to the changing order. It is true 
that some prophets, — and it is remarkable how many minor 
preachers became major prophets at the beginning of the 
war, — it is true, I say, that some of these prophets foretold 
the transformation and new vitalization of these traditional 
faiths in consequence of the War. Indeed, when these 
prophets sought to foretell the future, they indulged ex- 
travagantly. They told us that those who expected to ren- 
der service as preachers among the soldiers behind the lines 
must change their methods in dealing with young men and 
find a new message. All were doomed to failure who ven- 
tured to preach the old gospel to this army of young men 
in khaki ! Well, now as a matter of fact the only men who 
came back home from across the sea with heads drooped 
and no victories to their credit were these prophets and the 



So MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

preachers who accepted their prophecies and went into the 
camp with a new gospel. The men who went after our 
boys with the gospel with which these had been familiar 
at home found them ready listeners the night before battle, 
and these men came back home to report many conversions 
and triumphant death scenes. Dr. George Truett found that 
the gospel of Jesus which tamed the cow-boys of the West 
subdued the hearts of soldiers in France. The prophecies 
concerning the ecclesiasticism of Europe were equally false. 
Dr. John Clifford, who knows things, says of these religions 
and the effect of the war upon them that they have not 
found salvation. He says, "They do not win confidence, 
or inspire reverence, or challenge conscience, or strengthen 
will, or uplift conduct." They are still immobile and im- 
potent. 

The war has not changed these traditional religions, but 
it has modified the thought and feeling of the people for 
them and for the institutions of Catholicism. Millions have 
lost faith in both Roman and Greek Catholicism. The ex- 
quisite embroideries, the silver and gold, diamonds and 
jewels, the flashing crowns, bejeweled crosses, and unused 
wealth in many forms which one sees in some of the 
cathedrals of Europe, would, at their market value, feed 
and save from starvation a million women and children. 
But these priests, bishops and cardinals hug and hoard 
these useless marks of their vanity while children cry 
for bread. But the people will not forget. The vast and 
gorgeous cathedrals of Europe are even now and on gala 
days, when bishops and cardinals are on show, more than 
half empty. Even among the priests there is a loss of con- 
fidence. I am reliably informed that eight thousand Italian 
priests and monks who during the War got a taste of per- 
sonal liberty and a new sense of their manhood have de- 
clined to put on the frock again. 

Catholicism is discredited in Europe while making des- 
perate effort to establish itself in the favor of this country. 
But even here there is a quiet brooding on the facts and a 
growing intelligence concerning methods of propaganda. 



EUROPEAN PROGRAM 51 

All over the country there is increasing disgust at the way 
secular newspapers have, at the behest of the Knights of 
Columbus, framed up the McSweeney incident and used 
in America for proselyting purposes money which was given 
under government auspices for relief abroad. Some day 
politicians and editors of secular papers will learn that they 
do not command the intelligence, the patriotism and the 
conscience of the American people when they take their cue 
from Rome and lend themselves to a propaganda which 
seeks to embroil this nation with England. Those who lend 
their ears and columns to the designing schemes of a small 
minority of the religious element in this nation and that 
minority subject to and inspired by a religious autocrat 
seated on his throne on the Tiber, will find a waning follow- 
ing. Fifty-five per centum of the American people are of 
English stock, and half the other forty-five per centum have 
no confidence in Romanism or patience with those who 
pander to it. 

It is the hour of all hours in the history of Europe for 
evangelical Christians to fare forth in the spirit of Christ 
to satisfy the needs and heal the broken hearts of men. If 
I were asked to tell what is the most encouraging word I 
have heard in going up and down Europe, it would be that 
which a Baptist preacher told us in the London Conference. 
He said that prevented as German Baptists are from the 
privilege of continuing their foreign mission work, they 
have put on a program of house to house evangelism in 
Germany, and that men and women are going from door 
to door "telling the story in its simplest form." Mind you, 
telling the story, telling it in its simplest form in Germany 
where rationalism and high intellectualism have hooted the 
gospel of Jesus and where human theories have obscured 
the Christ of the Gospels. In my judgment there is for the 
Christian minister and for Christendom a lesson of highest 
missionary value in that simple phrase, "telling the story 
in its simplest form." We will go on courageously and 
faithfully equipping our schools, but we must free ourselves 
from some of the mischief which some schools have already 



52 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

wrought and get back to telling the story in its simplest 
form if we would reach the masses, evangelize the world 
and stem the tide of a Christless intellectualism. 

4. Another appeal of the European Program is that we 
hcuue set ourselves to the task of making conquest of the 
white races of the world. Let us not forget that to the white 
man God gave the instinct and talent to disseminate His 
ideals among other people and that He did not, to the same 
degree, give this instinct and talent to the yellow, brown 
or black race. The white race only has the genius to in- 
troduce Christianity into all lands and among all people. 
This is not a ground for spiritual pride nor of contempt for 
any colored race. It is a solemn fact. It fixes exceptional 
responsibility. 

If the white races of Europe are saved, they will not 
save the colored races, but they can inaugurate Christianity 
among the colored races and the converts which they make 
will ultimately create a native constituency and evangelize 
these nations. Indeed the peoples of Europe and their ideas 
overflow the world. Dr. John Clifford calls the people of 
Europe "the dispersion of these latter days." He says, 
"They go everywhere, they can not stay at home. Europe 
is too crowded. Take the gospel to Europeans and they 
will carry it everywhere." This is undoubtedly true. Euro- 
peans will bring Christianity instead of Roman intrigue to 
our own shores if we will evangelize Europe. We must 
deal with this fountain at its source. We must, to change 
the figure, plant the seed of gospel truth in the very heart 
of Europe, which is the seed-plot of great wars and great 
heresies and can be made the seed-plot of Christianity. 

Four-fifths of the white people of the world are in Europe. 
We have in our new foreign mission territory in Europe a 
white population which exceeds by one-fourth the total 
population of all races and classes in America and five 
times the white population of the South. It was to these 
white people that Paul was called to go in the voice from 
Macedonia. The call of Europe to-day in her hunger and 
refigious condition is no less resonant with the voice of God 



EUROPEAN PROGRAM 53 

for Southern Baptists than was the call of Macedonia for 
Paul. Hitherto this modern missionary era has been char- 
acterized by missions to the yellow races, the brown and the 
black races. Not for a moment do we contemplate doing 
less, but rather immeasurably more for Japan, China and 
Africa. In thus obeying God we have discharged some 
measure of the white man's great obligation. We shall not 
halt in this holy work, but Southern Baptists have entered 
into an alliance with their brethren that they will also, as 
an important part of this World Program, take account of 
the white races in Europe. 

Mr. Lothrop Stoddard has recently written an alarming 
book called "The Rising Tide of Color." He sees a new 
momentum in the ceaseless pressure of the colored races 
upon the white races of Europe. He views with something 
approaching consternation the fact that the Great War has 
weakened the resistance of the white races and made pen- 
etrable those outposts of defense which heretofore have 
resisted the tides of color ever pressing upon them. Mr. 
Stoddard has, we think, diagnosed the case correctly, but 
like all men who are alarmed, he has failed to name the 
effectual remedy for a danger like this. He sees safety in 
white alliance, in diplomacy, and a readiness for concerted 
militarism. He does not see that the religion of Jesus and 
that only will impart invincibleness to the white race and 
lift the colored races to the plain of peaceful participation 
in Christian civilization. If we can inject the truth and the 
spirit of Christ into European nations at this time when 
destiny is pivoted, we shall both save the white civilization 
of Europe and hasten, yea, insure the day of redemption for 
the brown races which menace white Europe. 

Southern Baptists are given a territory in the European 
Program which has peculiar strategic value. We are in 
the Balkans where Roman Catholicism and Greek Cathol- 
icism meet, where Christianity and Mohammedanism meet, 
and where the brown and white races meet. Roman 
Catholicism and Greek Catholicism have grappled. What- 
ever the mutual losses of these through antagonisms, we 



54 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

will endeavor to snatch up and turn to the gain of evan- 
gelical Christianity. And we will seek in the Balkans to 
flank Mohammedanism which more than Romanism or Greek 
Orthodoxy is the religion of conquest in our day. In the 
cock pit of the nations, whence have come strife and war, 
we shall seek to excite a passion for peace and brotherhood. 
5. The strong appeal of this European Program is that 
it affords fellowship with heroic spirits of our faith. It has 
been my good fortune as a State Missionary to work in 
waste places at home, and as a State Mission Secretary 
to have fellowship and comradeship with missionaries in the 
Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and in the Mississippi delta ; 
and later as one of the secretaries of the Home Mission 
Board, to companion with missionaries to the cowboys and 
the Indians on the plains of the West. I know something 
of the thrill which those enjoy who seek to gather diamonds 
for the Saviour's crown in mosquito swamps and in the 
slums of the cities. Often has my admiration for these 
State and Home Missionaries been stirred to enthusiasm. 
But I tell the simple truth when I say that I have known 
no men in the homeland who have been willing to take such 
risks and endure such sacrifices, to go to such lengths in 
order to carry the torch of our faith into the dark places 
as those whom I have come to know and communicate 
with among the heroes of the Cross on certain fields of 
Europe. I have never witnessed such quenchless enthusiasm 
as have some of these men with whom Southern Baptists 
are given the privilege of fellowship. These rugged and 
daring heroes are in Spain, in Jugo-Slavia, in Hungary, in 
Roumania, in Russia and Siberia. Their lives are full of 
thrilling instances of adventure for Christ. It is good not 
only for them but it is good for us to enter into this fellow- 
ship. We shall be cured of some of our self-pampering, be 
weaned from self-indulgence and shamed out of our ex- 
travagance by the simple living, the sacrifices, the incom- 
parable fortitude of these men who count not their lives 
dear unto them in their passion for Christ and the lost 
multitudes. 



EUROPEAN PROGRAM 55 

6. But the European Program has as its chief appeal 
this: That it rounds out the Baptist World Program. Get 
out your map of the world, and look up the countries in 
which the Foreign Mission Board is at work — Japan, China, 
Africa, Italy, Mexico, several South American Republics — 
and place in this scheme of outposts the new territory in Eu- 
rope, Spain, Jugo-Slavia, Hungary, Roumania, the Ukraine, 
and Southeast Russia, Northeast Russia and Siberia. 
Add to this Palestine and Syria. If you would get a still 
more adequate impression of the Baptist World Program, 
look up the countries in which Northern Baptists, Canadian 
Baptists, British, German, Swedish, and other Baptists 
are seeking to extend the frontiers of the Kingdom of God. 
At last our Baptist people are a religious world-power. 
Southern Baptists are a part of a great world-league through 
which we can secure concerted action throughout our scat- 
tered ranks and close and concentrated impact of influence 
can be registered where need and opportunity invite. We 
shall henceforth, as never before in our foreign mission 
effort, be fulfilling the Commission which prescribes mission 
service to all the world and to every creature. The Bible 
for our tactics, our Baptist brethren throughout the world 
for our compatriots, the map of the world our field of ac- 
tivity, we shall go from victory to victory until Christ shall 
reign and men everywhere shall be brothers in the bonds 
of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. 



56 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

New Territory. 

The following countries are included in the Foreign Mis- 
sion Board's new European and Asiatic mission field: 

Spain — 

Square miles 194,783 

Population 19,000,000 

Baptist church membership 700 

Jugoslavia — 

Square miles 73,243 

Population 10,013,317 

Baptist church membership 600 

Hungary — 

Square miles 53,011 

Population 7,000,000 

Baptist church membership. 11,000 

Roumania — 

Square miles 96,183 

Population 13,946,207 

Baptist church membership 17,000 

Russian Ukraine and Territory East thereof — 

Square miles 779,703 

Population 77,870,500 

Baptist church membership — (impossible 
to ascertain at this time). 

Siberia — 

Square miles 6,294,119 

Population 29,141,500 

Baptist church membership 10,000 

Syria and Palestine — 

Square miles 160,740 

Population 3,133,500 

Baptist church membership, about 100 

Total New Territory of Southern Baptists, 
approximately — 

Square miles 7,600,859 

Total population 16,075,000 



CHAPTER IV , 

BAPTIST MISSIONS IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER 

HOW can we impart the unchangeable gospel to the 
changing world and gain for the missionary enter- 
prise all the advantages that conditions offer? This is the 
big missionary problem now on the hands of the churches 
of Christ and their mission boards. The comparative suc- 
cess of the missionary enterprise and the welfare of the 
world to generations are conditioned upon the solution of 
this problem. 

Perhaps a brief review of some of the elements char- 
acteristic of the New World Order, elements indeed which 
make the new order, may help us to appraise whatever 
suggestions may be made for the solution of our problem. 
There is, all will admit, an extraordinariness about the 
present, whether one considers this to be an omen of good 
or one of ill. School children have seen changes take place 
in the world which octogenarians have not hitherto seen, 
and among these changes are some which are more sig- 
nificant than the remaking of national boundaries, maps 
and geographies. They affect the fundamental things in 
the social, political and intellectual life of men, and there is 
in them the sweep of internationalism, interracialism and 
universalism. The intellectual attitude, the moral ideals, 
the controlling motives and ultimate aims of men are af- 
fected. Christian missions must now certainly, and hence- 
forth probably, take account of this changed attitude and 
new human temper, and, I should say, must seek to take 
advantage of these because we believe that the changes which 
have formed the new world order make opportunity rather 
than difficulty for missions. This we believe to be true in 
particular of Baptist missions. The changes have for the 

57 



58 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

most part been salutary. They have tended to produce a 
more cordial hospitality for the simplicities of religion as ex- 
pounded in the Baptist message. But of this we can judge 
better with some of the characteristics of the new world 
order before us. 



What then are some of the marks which provoke speakers 
and writers everywhere to designate the present as a new 
world order? 

1. There has issued out of the past half dozen years a 
new realization of a community of human interests. Re- 
cent history constitutes a commentary upon such texts as 
"No man liveth unto himself ," "Am I my brother's keeper?" 
and "Who is my neighbor?" No nation is safe in its in- 
difference to the welfare of any other nation. It has been 
found that aloofness is impossible to any, that anything 
which concerns one concerns all. The whole world is af- 
fected by the woes or the depravity of any single member 
of the family of nations. The War has given a new birth 
to the conviction of racial unity. 

It is, however, superficial observation which draws from 
these facts the conclusion that national distinctions have 
grown faint while racial unity has grown strong. The truth 
is that along with racial unity has emerged vigorous national 
consciousness and self-assertion in every nation and racial 
group the world over. There is a new glorying in nation- 
ality and the racial family group. There is not the least 
probability of a great merger, a blend of nations in which 
the original racial differentials will not be distinguishable. 
Indeed, it would be difficult to determine whether racial 
unity or national independence has received a greater im- 
petus from the War. Nevertheless, the fact stands out and 
cannot be mistaken, that an element of the new world order 
is a common recognition of a mutualness of interests from 
which no nation is exempt. 

2. A recognition of race obligation is another mark of a 



NEW WORLD ORDER 59 

new order. There is not only a realization that there is no 
escape from the consequences of wrong and ill anywhere, 
but a deep and idealistic concern for the unfortunate every- 
where. Men have gone beyond the self-interest which is 
concerned for the common weal and woe of nations. They 
have had their moral sensibilities aroused and a new altru- 
ism has bloomed on the tree of humanity. There never 
was such response and outpouring of compassion as has 
been seen in recent months. This has not been produced 
by an instinct for self-protection nor the fear of peril. The 
record-breaking philanthropies are not born of a fearful 
looking for of judgment, nor practiced as a means of appeas- 
ing Fate. They are rather expositions of Paul's words, "I 
am debtor." A sense of moral responsibility for men every- 
where has settled upon true and thoughtful men with a 
weight that was never experienced before. 

3. Another mark of the new world order is a deeper 
persuasion of the immanence of God. Men called upon 
God while the battle raged, and somehow there settled in 
the minds of soldiers on the field, statesmen in senate cham- 
bers, men at their desks and in the shops that God was "not 
far from every one of us." Millions who hitherto were 
aliens and without God in the world have come to believe 
that He is encountered in the affairs of nations, and that 
we must give account to Him even in this world. Some 
men, like H. G. Wells, have their brains so enmeshed in a 
net of philosophic cobwebs of their own spinning that they 
can not very intelligently describe their new consciousness 
of God, but many to whom God was before the War but 
a name for an unreal or vastly distant being, have to-day 
a persuasion of His awful immanence. When the preacher 
talks of Jehovah to these men now his message is not 
heard as a Norse tale. There is almost terrible realization 
of God's impending judgments over men and nations who 
forget Him. They have seen a nation attempt to abrogate 
the moral code and believe that they have seen God's power 
and witnessed His judgments. To such henceforth 



60 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

"Earth is crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush aflame with God." 

This persuasion is expanding among men and nations. 

4. Another element is a new realization of the superi- 
ority of evangelical Christianity among the religions of 
the world and the sects of Christendom. The nations found 
in the Wlar no other such reliable ally as the evangelical 
churches and the sufferers from war have no other such 
friends. It is under the preaching of the gospel and in 
the atmosphere of worship that we are to find the source 
and impulse of disinterested service for country and the 
world. We have witnessed in the momentous years of 
the War a demonstration of the value of evangelical Chris- 
tianity upon which historians will in the future certainly 
dwell. While the Pope was playing the diplomat, evangel- 
ical preachers and churches were making positive both their 
patriotism and their Christianity by floating Liberty Bonds, 
equipping Red Cross corps, and preaching Christ in the 
camps, trenches and hospitals. No nation has a dependable 
ally like unto an evangelical citizenship. The War has left 
no question as to the patriotism of such citizens. Roman 
Catholic Ireland and Roman Catholic Canada have by their 
behavior during the War brought a reproach upon Romanism 
which it will never remove by all the camouflage of which 
the papacy is pastmaster, nor by any plausible resolutions 
which truculent or hoodwinked congressmen may under 
the influence of Rome's agents get through National Assem- 
bly. No nation has a basis of patriotism or high idealism 
in a consistent Roman Catholic population. This com- 
panion fact to the dependableness of evangelical citizenship 
must be placed with the things which frame up a situation 
on which men are reaching conclusions and which impart 
distinguishing characteristics to the age. 

5. Democracy, the ideal and goal of society, is another 
mark of the new order. Note that I say, the goal of so- 
ciety is democracy. Democracy is a thing hoped for. There 
have been disillusionments as well as experiments in de- 
mocracy during the eventful months which have elapsed 



NEW WORLD ORDER 61 

since October, 1918. The world will never again abandon 
the ideal of democracy, but sensible men will not, in the 
light of events, over-idealize concerning it nor think it feasi- 
ble unduly to hasten its adoption as a form of political life 
for every nation. Democracy is not a present possibility 
for all nations and classes, nor is it a panacea for all the 
ills of any division or class of society. Men must be pre- 
pared for democracy and democracy must be reinforced 
wherever it is put in operation. The world of to- 
day gives striking instances of premature experiments in 
democracy. These facts must be admitted, but they do not 
demand the abandonment of the ideal, nor the lowering 
of the standard for a world democracy which shall free 
men and nations from autocracies and hierarchies in politics 
and religion. It is simply a statement of irrelevancies when 
we say that you can not have a pure religious democracy 
under a political autocracy, nor have a perfect political 
democracy with religious hierarchy. Collision in either 
case is inevitable at certain points. But men have found 
a political guiding star and they will follow it until diffi- 
culties in the way of democracy are removed and hope of 
it is fulfilled in state and in religion. 

6. The loud insistence upon the rational, spiritual, and 
practical in religion is another characteristic of the times. 
The demand is made and sooner or later all religions will 
have to square to it. Every step in intellectual advance- 
ment, all attainment in spiritual psychology and the practical 
humanities adds force to this demand. Nothing in the 
name of religion will eventually be tolerated which is either 
irrational, unspiritual or does not "bring forth fruits meet 
for repentance." No hoary system or venerable sanction 
will save religion from the crucible. No ecclesiastical sys- 
tem will be able to preserve the lifeless and inefficacious 
forms which characterize certain religious bodies, however 
perfect and formable the system and ornate its rituals. 
Religious magic, which is divorced from intelligence and 
lacks power to produce spiritual results, will be dragged 
into light which it can not bear. Only that religion which 



62 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

is validated by transparent spiritual life and commensurate 
deeds of human service can survive the new day which is 
breaking everywhere. 

ii 

These are some of the characteristics of the New World 
Order. What bearing have they upon missions, and Baptist 
missions in particular? 

Christianity now enters a new competition with all other 
religions, and evangelical Christianity has strengthened its 
rivalry with Romanism. The superstitions of heathenism 
and Romanism alike will suffer under the application of the 
new standards of judgment which the age has set up for 
religion. Men have experienced a consciousness of God 
and have become aware of reality in religion, the necessity 
for religion, and no substitute or superficiality will satisfy 
the leaders and expounders of thought henceforth. The 
souls of men have had such experiences during the past six 
years that only the great religious realities can meet their 
needs. Gradually but certainly this disposition of mind 
and heart will permeate the masses everywhere. It has 
been found, too, that nothing but a righteousness begotten 
of direct response to the immanent God can guarantee 
the moral foundation of the world and secure society from 
other and greater catastrophes. The strength of society 
and the nation is to be secured through religious vitalization, 
and evangelical Christianity must impart this. 

Therefore, to win in the field of missions, evangelical 
Christianity has only to possess itself of its native power, 
release itself from all devitalizing accretions of ecclesiastical 
systems and of mesmeric rites and discharge in full measure 
its missionary duty. Christianity was endowed at the begin- 
ning for service in such an hour as this. Kept in its primi- 
tive purity and freedom, it is equal to its new tasks. In 
making the plea for Christian unity, some writers and 
speakers have inveighed against transplanting to the mission 
fields the inheritances from historic controversies, local and 



NEW WORLD ORDER 63 

national provincialisms. Good advice that, if only it is 
applied where it is needed ; but those who make promiscuous 
application of it do not show the courage of true seers and 
prophets. Let the reformer on these lines stand up before 
the guilty sects and say, "Thou art the denomination/'' 
Those denominations which have cherished inheritances 
from sectarian controversies or partisan ecclesiastical courts 
must disrobe themselves of these outworn and mildewed 
garments. 

The friends who are raising the call that provincialisms 
be discarded, are but repeating the demand which Bap- 
tists have made from time immemorial, only these speak- 
ers and writers have not had the courage to designate the 
guilty parties and frankly to give honor to whom honor 
is due. All the controversy Baptists have ever had with 
other Christians has been over this very matter of unscrip- 
tural inheritances from periods, localities, parties, historical 
creeds, customs, and ecclesiasticisms. Let the champion of 
union and the indigenous church give us credit for antici- 
pating them by ages and for a consistent history, and join 
us in protest against these, validating their sincerity by 
abandoning superfluous forms which have in the course of 
history and controversy attached to them. We desire to 
see on the mission fields a church unafflicted by accretions 
from any source; but that which mars a church in China 
mars it here. A Chinese characteristic attached to a church 
is quite as indefensible as a British characteristic, Italian 
characteristic, or American characteristic. To condemn 
inherited nationalisms in religion and deliberately to go 
about encouraging others to bequeath to their posterity those 
of their race or nation is anomalous. 

But this is a crucible age, and religion will be tried as 
by fire. The hearts of men ache for religious certainty and 
reality, and having learned what it is, they will have nothing 
else. The threefold test of rationality, spirituality and a 
practical ministry will reduce Christianity in many quarters 
to greater simplicity. There is no escaping consequences. 
The day will declare it. 



64 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

But what of Baptist missions in the new world order? 
It is obvious, I think, that not by so much as one count 
do these facts make any difficulty for Baptists. Some of 
them make new opportunities for Baptist missions. The 
field is an open one for Baptists if they are ready to break 
camp and enter upon a mighty world campaign. The cur- 
rents of human thought are favorable for the Baptist mes- 
sage. Their faith is the nearest religious counterpart of the 
demands which the new age is making upon religion. The 
things which the leaders of men to-day are insisting upon 
are in many great matters the very things upon which 
Baptists have always insisted. No one can more strongly 
or consistently plead for personal, intelligent choice in reli- 
gion, personal and vital experiences of God, spirituality in 
religion, and a pure democracy, than Baptists have pro- 
claimed throughout their history. If these are marks of 
the new age, then the Baptist message meets the require- 
ments. They have never known any other than self-govern- 
ing and self-propagating churches. Their appeal has not been 
to Bunyan or Spurgeon, to history or ecclesiastical court, 
but to Paul and Jesus, to the divine example and the divine 
Word. They have admitted the validity of nothing for 
which there could not be shown a "thus saith the Lord," 
and they have always been willing to be called before this 
court of final appeal, the inspired Word of God, for an 
examination of their faith. The new world order brings 
them their missionary opportunity. The demands which it 
makes upon religion do not prove embarrassing to intelligent 
and consistent Baptists. They have no creeds to revise, 
no autocracies to apologize for, no ecclesiastical system to 
reform, and no mere traditional sins or conventionalities 
laden their missionary bark. No man or set of men can 
champion a greater respect for human personality, abso- 
lute amenableness to the voice of God, provide a better 
guarantee for spiritual religion, or advocate a more thor- 
oughgoing democracy than Baptists are now preaching from 
more than 50,000 pulpits in America and have preached 
to their fellow men from the first days of the republic, not 



NEW WORLD ORDER 65 

to mention their witness-bearing to the Truth in other lands. 
To these things they have given their martyrs while yet 
others were transplanting in America the seeds of old-world 
controversies against Baptist protest. It is now these latter, 
and not the Baptists, who need to abandon sectarianisms 
and make their churches indigenous in America after the 
true New Testament pattern before calling on others to do 
this on the mission fields. 



in 

But what have Baptists to do to meet the requirements 
of the times, to justify their contention and demonstrate 
on the field of missions that their faith is a necessity and a 
remedy for a world in need? How shall Baptists make 
use of this new opportunity and set up in the midst of the 
nations the kingdom of God? 

1. They must proclaim their message, and they must 
do this without timidity and with evangelistic passion. 
Their simple message contains the richest values of the 
gospel. These must be imparted to a distraught world with 
all haste and diligence. In all important elements their 
message is a counterpart of the needs and the demands 
which obtain in the new world order. Victory for mis- 
sions is in the missionary message conditioned only upon 
the faithfulness and passion with which it is preached 
and the divine presence which is guaranteed to such loyalty 
and devotion. Positive preaching and positive preaching 
only has victories to its credit in any land or age. Any 
slighting emphasis upon the elementary principles of the 
gospel, any hesitation to declare the full counsel, whether 
due to deference or to fear, any attempt to advance under 
the standard of an interrogation point, will cost Baptists 
the sublimest opportunity they have ever faced and the 
sublimest now given to any religious party. If after two 
thousand years we have no certain, positive missionary mes- 
sage, we are in a pitiful plight. But we have, thank God, 
for we have the original Commission without alterations, 



66 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

additions or accretions. The imperious mandate of the 
Book and of the times in which we live is, "Preach the 
Word." With this sword of the Spirit we shall win our 
victories. 

The missionary enterprise includes a multiform work. 
Christianity is as complex and comprehensive in one land 
as another. The life of God in the soul expresses itself 
in a varied human service. It will find channels of bless- 
ings for society in China as it has in America. There is 
nothing which conditions life that will not feel the influ- 
ence of the divine life begotten by the Word wherever that 
life takes root in any nation. Of this there can be no 
question. But the foreign missionary enterprise is dealing 
with primary things. It is set for the introduction of the 
leaven of the gospel into the society of China, India, Africa. 
To secure the connection of the Christian dynamic with 
humanity on the mission field is the first and main thing 
with which the missionary and missionary agency are 
charged. Whatever is indispensable to this initial work is a 
part of missionary operations. Those things which lie 
beyond these requirements, although they belong to a full 
and complete Christian society, have, to say the very least, 
secondary claim upon mission boards and missionaries. The 
gospel is itself a creative and habilitating force in society. 
A sufficient supply of pure gospel will transform any com- 
munity, improve sanitation, raise social standards and start 
up the necessary forms of social service, even though the 
preachers give themselves "continually to prayer and to the 
ministry of the Lord." 

The missionary on the ground will find his relation to 
social questions, but the motive of his going, like the terms 
of the Commission under which he goes, takes these things 
for granted. They are consequential and not primary. The 
missionary goes as an evangelist and not as a reformer, but 
his evangel is transforming, which is far better. Better 
houses, better clothes, better conditions of life generally 
spring up along the path which the missionary's feet have 
trod and along whose borders he has scattered the precious 



NEW WORLD ORDER 67 

seeds of the gospel. The man who makes it his vocation to 
call men into fellowship with God will create a clean and 
wholesome society whether he ever heard of a social club 
or read a book on sociology. To make these latter things 
the engaging concern in a missionary's life is to court 
disaster for the missionary enterprise. This simply is not 
the scheme which Jesus announced for the missionary enter- 
prise, and hence must fail. The transforming, fertilizing 
gospel is to be the chief concern of those who seek to save 
a lost world. 

We put it down with deliberation after having studied 
with some diligence missionary problems at home and abroad, 
that if there is cause for alarm anywhere and the success 
of the missionary enterprise is threatened from any quar- 
ter, it is from this, that a few schools from which mission- 
aries are turned out are reticent concerning the message 
which the mission boards are appointed to promulgate, and 
which missionaries are commissioned to proclaim. And 
next to this is the tutoring which substitutes social service 
"leadership" and big office administration at home and 
abroad for the simple evangelistic method of the New Tes- 
tament. The Baptist denomination cannot meet its mission- 
ary obligation and opportunity, nor perpetuate itself, through 
men who have been inoculated with such ideals for mis- 
sionary service. Wisely, Baptists have always made ample 
room for independent thought and speech, both in and 
without the denomination. The day is now too near the 
noontide for any one to introduce dark inquisitional methods 
in dealing with either schools or men; but, if we have a 
mission, we have a message. I would say we have a mis- 
sion because we have a message. 

Uncertainty, doubt, equivocation, or reticence concerning 
the fundamental elements of that message and the distin- 
guishing principles of the denomination are marks of neither 
superior intellectual ability or independence, nor a sign of 
qualification for service in the new world order. This world 
order is challenging Baptists and daring them to prove that 
their message and their method are equal to a great oppor- 



68 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

tunity. We ought not to be cheated out of the complete 
demonstration that we are making. That any one in re- 
sponsible denominational position should from unwillingness 
or whatever cause be reticent about telling what he believes 
concerning the constituent elements in the Christian mission- 
ary message or articles of Baptist faith does not savor of 
candid dealing with his constituency nor comport with the 
contention for freedom of speech. The peril is too great for 
reticence concerning the missionary message to be popular- 
ized as a standard among us. The missionary is a pro- 
claimer. Candor of soul is a mark of his genuineness and 
worth. Those who deal with young missionaries should 
reflect that they are to be the bearers of messages of life 
and the representatives of the missionary conscience of the 
home constituency. It is men with a message and a con- 
science for it who will let loose among the nations of the 
earth revolutionizing, energizing forces and open springs of 
human ministry. The triumphant and joyful acclaim of one 
of the first missionaries of this gospel was, "In Christ 
Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel." The gospel 
fecundates human souls. The essential elements of that 
gospel are too few and too unmistakably set forth in the 
New Testament for anybody to qualify for missionary 
service who does not know them, believe them, and in 
conscience avow them. 

2. Baptists of the world must find each other and agree 
upon coordinated and concerted effort for the proclamation 
of their message. We are to deal with a new world order. 
The challenge and opportunity is universal in magnitude. 
No single group or organization of Baptists is equal to such 
a task. The full effort of all at their best and in concert 
of action will be required to take care of the opportunities 
which the world offers. 

Speaking now to Southern Baptists in particular, I would 
say that we can neither justify our independence of inter- 
denominational alliance, nor demonstrate the value of a 
denominational program if we do not set ourselves to a 
truly great missionary service and seek to coordinate the 



NEW WORLD ORDER 69 

missionary effort of the respective groups of Baptists in all 
the world. We have by a firm, but for the most part broth- 
erly and dignified course gained much by declining to be 
entangled by any of the big, overlapping, extravagant and 
ineffective organizations. These organizations have crowded 
us into relief before the eyes of the world, and now the 
world is waiting to see what we will do and what we have 
to say which is of missionary value to the world. If indeed 
we have a message, and we covet opportunity for great 
service, nothing more fortunate could have befallen us than 
the present challenge, but nothing less than great service is 
becoming and nothing else will save us from the reproach 
of men. But again, if we are to render such a service, a 
Baptist entente cordiale is necessary. Doubtless, there will 
be found many difficulties and discouragements in working 
our terms and plans of cooperation, but courage and grace 
under the stress of great emergency and opportunity in mis- 
sionary service will find a way. 

Europe illustrates the necessity for this alliance. The 
great war has lifted to the eyes of the world and left on our 
hands a great mission field in Europe. Already important 
posts are manned by heroes of our faith, but these are inse- 
curely held by these small intrepid companies at different 
points on the continent. These cannot hold the lines and 
advance them without our help, and we cannot do it ignor- 
ing them. A practical plan must be worked out by the 
administrative agencies of the denomination here and there 
by which the combined influence of the Baptists of America 
and the scattered groups of Baptists in Europe may be cen- 
tered at imperiled and important positions. There are thrill- 
ing possibilities in such an effort. The vision of the whole 
Baptist brotherhood in concerted action for the promulgation 
of our missionary message throughout this modern world 
haunts one day and night. Southern Baptists have no de- 
signs upon any group of their brethren anywhere except to 
reenforce them in effectual witness to the truth with which 
the denomination is entrusted. 

Among the many needs of Europe, the need of the gospel 



;o MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

is the greatest. As great as is temporal want among the 
people of Europe, they need the gospel of Christ more than 
philanthropies. The War has not ended war because it has 
aiot slain jealousy, suspicion, envy, hate, and greed. The 
War was the result of an attempt at salvation by education. 
It proved futile and disastrous. Already the signs are 
evident that salvation by democracy is equally futile. What 
is the effective remedy ? What can go to the root of moral 
being and cure such faults as enmity, hate, greed, suspicion ? 
We have the answer, "The words that I speak unto you, they 
are spirit, they are life," "If the truth shall make you free, 
ye shall be free indeed." Christ Jesus only is made unto 
men and nations "wisdom and righteousness and sanctifica- 
tion and redemption." Great issues are pending in Europe 
and great opportunities are afforded American Christianity. 
Our Baptist family-tree is rooted in Europe and we need 
to recognize our obligation to our brothers who are on the 
old estate. 

A recent book by C. H. Robinson tells the story of the 
conversion of Europe. In its remarkable condensation of 
a long period of European missionary history, it cites the 
fact that the conversion of continental peoples was super- 
ficial. The author says, "The war demonstrates the truth 
of the assertion that the conversion of Europe as a whole 
has been superficial, and that its reconversion is a task 
that has to be faced by the Christian church." In the 
collapse of old civilizations we have the failure of human 
experiments and the token that the world may now get a 
new start. If the right forces can be applied to the moral 
impulses and powers of men a beautiful and fruitful human- 
ity may grow out of the pulverized civilizations of Europe. 
We believe tremendously in the Christian potentialities of 
Germany if, instead of a semi-conversion, this wonderful 
people can be regenerated by the power of God. France, 
too, may yet furnish missionaries for the evangelical faith 
as many and as strong as she has furnished Romanism. 

American Baptists dare not stand aloof and look with 
indifference upon religious conditions in Europe. Our 



NEW WORLD ORDER 71 

brethren there need to hear the shout of comradeship. Most 
European Baptists hold in great jealousy a sound evan- 
gelicalism. American Baptists can furnish much mate- 
rial aid and by their spirit of brotherliness and evangelistic 
spirit impassion their European brothers in the task of 
soul-winning. 



CHAPTER V 

BAPTIST WOMEN IN THE BAPTIST WORLD PROGRAM 

MEN may not always have been frank enough to say 
so, but they have always known their need of women 
in every good cause. As our conception of the sphere of 
Christian duty has expanded and conviction has deepened 
that Christian principles and standards should be applied to 
all the activities and relations of life, the sense of this need 
of woman's help has increased correspondingly. It remains 
true that her influence is still needed in the home and that 
she should there find her supreme opportunity to achieve 
her greatest triumphs. She can from this seat of empire 
extend the beneficence of her reign while contributing to the 
security of her throne. Woman must give first attention 
to the life and influences within the walls of her home, 
for if she neglects to do this, there is left no one to guard 
this citadel of civilization. But in our jealousy for the 
home we have become concerned for the atmosphere which 
surrounds it, and woman can help men make this atmosphere 
pure. She is needed to help fix the social life and standards 
which belt the home about. Operating from her home, made 
full and complete by her influence, she can effect results in 
community welfare. We have learned that moral standards 
cannot be maintained anywhere without her help. Beyond 
the pale of her positive Christian influence begin the arid or 
miasmic moral zones. Where she does not reenforce men 
in fixing and applying moral standards, these are low and 
both men and women suffer in consequence. 

It is evident to all discerning observers that women are 
both victims and agents of the immoralities and vices which 
afflict civilization. There is no blinking the fact that woman 
is both held down by low moral standards and that she 
help's to make low moral standards for others. This is a 

72 



BAPTIST WOMEN 73 

fact so significant and consequential that discussion of it 
should not be avoided through timidity or false deference. 
If men or women fail in wisdom and courage in facing this 
fact, both will pay a heavy penalty. Men cannot rise in the 
moral scale without the help of women and no man will 
long be content to live on a low moral plane without the 
companionship of woman. He cannot rise without her, and 
without her example and influence lacks motive to try. Her 
influence is positively good or it is positively bad. She 
either lifts up or she pulls down. There is in civilization 
no moral problem which does not concern her both as an 
object and an agent. 

When we come to consider religious life and relations, 
the evidence of woman's influence and the indispensableness 
of her help are equally impressive. Her influence sweetens 
church fellowship. There is no complete church life without 
her. The devout women promote devotion. They incite 
worship, chasten the spirit of man, and inspire Christian 
activity. The larger the religious program, the more im- 
portant it is that women shall find their relation to it. We 
do not propose to discuss just what the New Testament 
teaches as to woman's personal and official relations to pub- 
lic and organized Christianity. The book which expounds 
the New Testament on that relationship has not yet been 
written, though it is needed. Conditions and circumstances 
challenge the times to produce a man with sufficient courage 
and sufficiently void of prepossessions to interpret exactly 
the New Testament as to what is the difference, if any, be- 
tween the personal privileges, rights, and opportunities to 
which the New Testament admits women, and the limit 
which it fixes upon her official relation to organized Chris- 
tianity. We are, however, discussing the value and indis- 
pensableness of woman's help in religious life and work, 
about which there is no dispute. The expanding work of 
the churches lays claims upon our women and makes their 
help increasingly necessary if this work is not to suffer. 

Turn your eyes to the mission fields. During recent 
months Baptists have broken new ground and begun a new 



74 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

chapter in the history of Foreign Missions. It is doubtful 
that there has ever been a more significant three years in the 
history of the Baptist people than that which has followed 
the close of the Great War. We have enlarged the bounds 
of our operations. We have made a missionary program 
which is worthy of a great people. The process of setting 
up this program is well advanced. It is, therefore, an 
opportune time to lay on the hearts of our sisters this greater 
task in which their help is needed, and in the promotion of 
which they must have an honorable and important part and 
bear great responsibility. 

My own thinking has undergone changes, and my heart 
has felt a burden which it never felt before, as I have 
studied woman's condition on some of the foreign mission 
fields, and have come better to understand her deep distress 
and needs, her capacity, and her intimate relation to all that 
we are trying to do on the behalf of the nations ; and I have 
learned to think of our women at home as the indispensable 
helpers in making Foreign Missions the effectual relief for 
what I have seen. With my growing acquaintance with mis- 
sion fields, mission work, and mission problems, nothing has 
impressed me more than the woman problem in Foreign 
Missions and Christian civilization. 

Turn then, will you, to the expanded and expanding mis- 
sion fields. Take a map of the world and look up the coun- 
tries in which our Foreign Mission Board is now at work. 
Make a careful study of the expanse and population of 
Japan, China, Africa, Mexico, the South American Repub- 
lics, Italy, and the nations of Europe, and our fields in the 
Near East. Study the strategy in missionary conquest of 
Europe which includes the Balkans and the distressed but 
potential country of Russia. If you would get a still more 
adequate impression of the Baptist World Program in which 
the Baptist people have taken their place, look up the coun- 
tries in which Northern Baptists, Canadian Baptists, British, 
German, Swedish, and other Baptist groups, are seeking to 
extend the borders of the Kingdom of God. At last our 
Baptist people are a world power. They have in their 



BAPTIST WOMEN 75 

faith and devotion to Christ a world league through which 
they can secure concerted action throughout their scattered 
ranks, and close and concentrated impact of influence wher- 
ever need and opportunity challenge them throughout the 
world. 

We shall henceforth as never before be fulfilling the Great 
Commission; we shall preach the gospel in all the world, 
and more truly than ever to "every creature." We must, 
however, understand that in a campaign so great we need 
the steady support of the women. We shall quail before 
our enemies and victories will be suspended if woman's in- 
fluence is not constant and strong in support of our advanc- 
ing lines ; and we shall fail to carry into the civilizations on 
the mission fields the healing of the gospel of Christ which 
men and women both need, if our women do not there illus- 
trate the graces of our Christianity and dispense as only 
women can, a ministry of compassion and gentleness. These 
vast mission fields present needs of women which the women 
at home dare not ignore, nor fail to qualify themselves to 
meet. 

We would point out some facts which seem to us call 
for the thoughtful consideration of our women, and suggest 
their place in the Baptist World Program. 



The Place of Women on the Field in This Program 

1. Women are discriminated against on all mission fields. 
In no heathen, Mohammedan, or Catholic country in the 
world has woman risen above severe limitations upon her 
personality. She has not and quite probably will not escape 
the most cruel discrimination without the help of Chris- 
tianity. There is no exception to the rule in all the world, 
although the injustice varies here and there. It is in the 
lands of evangelical Christianity, and in these lands alone, 
that woman's personality is reverenced, her rights respected, 
her capacities recognized, and the opportunities for full self- 



76 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

expression and the most fruitful service to the race are 
accorded her. In other lands she is not admitted to equality, 
nor are her powers recognized to be equal with those of 
men. In many heathen lands her youth is bartered. Men 
buy as many wives as they can support, and young girls are 
at a premium in this most cruel of all slave markets. The 
wife must not companion with her husband on equality. She 
must see that her husband is fed, but keep in the background. 
In Mohammedan lands she is not allowed to enter the 
mosque. Her presence would defile the place of religious 
worship. In Africa she is the burden bearer. In China she 
is maimed with the beginning of childhood and hobbles 
through life in torture. In countries which Rome dominates 
she is too frequently given dress and ornaments only to 
make her a more attractive plaything, and not because of 
peculiar veneration for her personality. Refined, cultured 
womanhood, dowered with the rights of her personality and 
the opportunities for its development, are found in those 
lands only where evangelical Christianity has broken or 
prevented the dominance of heathenism and Catholicism. 
In all other lands she is maimed in mind and soul, and 
civilization suffers in consequence. 

2. Women suffer disabilities in consequence of false re- 
ligion. They are victims of disease which superstition 
fosters. Their own bodies and the bodies of their children 
suffer because of retarded science and of quack doctors. 
In America we have one doctor to every 2,000 of our 
population. In China there is one doctor to two millions 
of the population, and in some provinces one doctor to five 
millions. In many districts of China where men, women, 
and children suffer the physical consequences of heathen- 
ism and the low moral standards which it fosters, patients 
in desperate need of quick attention are as far from a 
doctor as San Francisco is from New York, if we take into 
account the time that it will take to get the patient to the 
doctor. The days of journey required to place a patient in 
a Christian hospital are in many cases consumed in wheel- 
barrow travel which adds to the desperateness of the case, 



BAPTIST WOMEN 77 

and frequently costs the life of the patient en route. Heath- 
enism does not build hospitals, nor train skillful doctors, 
nor compound healing medicines, nor prepare nurses for the 
sick. Native doctors more often aggravate disease and 
increase the torture of the suffering than relieve it. Sev- 
enty million women in China are on their way through life 
with bound feet, and native doctors see in this nothing 
incongruous with their profession. Native priests offer no 
rebuke of parental cruelty which maims children for life. 

Women in heathen and papal lands are the victims of 
ignorance. In India one woman in a hundred can read. 
In China one in a thousand, and in some parts perhaps ten 
in a million. Even in Continental Europe, where Roman 
Catholicism and Greek Catholicism are strong and have 
had centuries in which to work out their ideals among some 
of the most capacious people of the globe, the education of 
women is in the background. There has been grown no 
conscience for the training of women and no admission of 
a place for her in the potential forces of Christianity. The 
progeny of Romanism as well as heathenism is ignorance, 
superstition, and the severest limitation upon personality, 
and especially upon the personality of women. Perhaps 
American Christianity has no greater task than to revolu- 
tionize the thinking of men in Europe with regard to 
woman's education and her preparation for Christian service 
on the Continent. 

3. Along with these facts take this other: The women 
and children are the first beneficiaries of missions on all 
fields. The missionary visitor, usually a woman, carries the 
first light of Christianity into the desolate homes of women 
and children. These unfortunate, neglected, and oppressed 
ones thus have their first acquaintance with a new tender- 
ness and personal consideration which fairly sets their aching 
hearts aquiver. They are recognized as somebody ! They 
are treated as human creatures. They have in such visits 
and in the ministry which the missionary practices the first 
token of a religion that admits women to the full privileges 
and bestows on her the copious blessings of religion. The 



78 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

sick are carried by missionaries to hospitals and nursed 
with tender care and affectionate regard as if they had claim 
upon respect and love. New hopes are revived; a new 
light is kindled in the eye. As one by one they find the 
explanation of these tender ministries, they yield up their 
hearts joyfully to the Saviour, becoming the possessors of 
His love. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that the first converts, and 
the majority, are women and children. Say all that you can 
say for the work of the Young Men's Christian Association, 
you must confess it a defective organization in fulfilling the 
Commission which commands that the gospel shall be 
preached to every creature. The Y. M. C. A., avowedly 
without direct mission to women and children, overlooks 
the greatest sufferers and those who bear the consequences 
of greatest neglect and injustice. The churches of Christ, 
with their full-orbed missionary program to expound the 
Great Commission, are the only agencies that will ever 
correct the chief ills which heathenism and Romanism im- 
pose upon the race. 

4. Another fact : Women are the chief conservators of 
religion. This applies to papal and pagan faiths, and can 
be depended upon for evangelical Christianity. Says Dr. 
Groesbeck, "The strongholds of heathenism are in the heart 
of women. These strongholds cannot be stormed, but 
must be taken by milder means of love and service." That 
religion which neglects womanhood will itself be neglected 
finally. We shall never conquer Japan, nor China, nor 
Africa, nor Europe for Christ until this stronghold of 
woman's love and fidelity is taken, and we shall never 
take this without the help of our sisters and comrades in 
service. No one is so well fitted for effectual ministry 
to women and children as woman. 

5. Women hold the strategic positions on the mission 
fields. They hold guard over the hom,e and over the im- 
pressionable years of childhood. We shall never kindle altar 
fires in the dark lands without her help, and these fires 
will never be smothered if her religious enthusiasm fans 



BAPTIST WOMEN 79 

them. Is the decline of family altars in the Christian homes 
of America expository of a new type of womanhood? If 
it is, that fact is the greatest rebuke to Christian women 
I know. 

Let us not make the mistake of supposing that the humble 
place which women in heathen lands hold is indicative of a 
feeble personality. I assure you on the observations of 
all who have made observation in China, that women there 
are comparatively as potential as in America. The effort 
to suppress her personality has maimed but has not slain 
the innate force of womanhood which dwells in every Chi- 
nese woman. She is not a figurehead. She is a victim of a 
false social order, and has a false respect for social custom 
which makes her submissive to a degree to assumed mascu- 
line superiority and to conform too readily to social abuse. 
Under such conditions you will not understand her unless 
you look beneath custom. There you will find many signs 
of her irrepressible force of character. A story told me 
by a missionary in China will perhaps illustrate my meaning. 
A Chinese gentleman asked the missionary, "Do your men 
in America rule the women, or do the women rule the men ?" 
The missionary replied, "Well, the men think they rule the 
women, but as a matter of fact the women boss the men." 
The Chinese gentleman's face lighted up, and he said, "The 
same way in China!" 

Women suffer their feet to be bound in China not be- 
cause they are too weak to resist the will of man, but for 
the same reason that women in America dress outlandishly : 
they are slaves to custom, and in that respect show their 
chief weakness. Carry the gospel of Jesus into the homes* 
into the domestic and social life of women, and you have 
touched the springs of civilization and taken a strategic 
stronghold for Christian missionary advance. Christian 
women, who themselves have been emancipated from social 
slavery, are to be God's messengers and woman's emanci- 
pators in China and in other lands. 

6. Christian womanhood on the mission field becomes the 
most convincing and irrefutable polemic of our Christianity. 



80 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

Women in China, India, and Africa will repeat the story of 
womanhood in America, and by their redeemed personal- 
ities and the spiritual transfiguration of their very bodies 
become the greatest argument that Christianity has yet put 
forth. The transfigured life of women under the power 
of the gospel and the spirit of Christ has proved and will 
prove the incontrovertible, irresistible apologetic for Chris- 
tianity. Men have under this power illustrated the virtues 
of Christianity, but women adorn the moral virtues with 
the Christian graces, and those who see the transfiguration, 
know that something more than self-will or self-respect or 
self-interest has operated to account for it. In the days 
when Christianity was first penetrating the surrounding 
heathen darkness, an old heathen philosopher said, looking 
upon the Christian women, "What women you Christians 
have !" No man can look upon transformed and transfigured 
Christian womanhood and not wonder at the marvels of the 
grace of God. 

ii 

The Part of Christian Women at Home in This World 
Program 

The Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Con- 
vention has undertaken as a part of its task to reach and 
uplift millions of unfortunate women — women who possess 
the potentialities of womanhood and who are as capable as 
women in America of adorning the doctrines of God. The 
millions in China who hobble on deformed feet and broken 
bones about their daily task, the millions of girl widows 
in India, and the millions of burden-bearers in Africa, call 
to us in the very pathos of their suffering for a gospel of 
woman's liberation and glorification. Millions in Europe 
who have been the severest sufferers from the War, and 
who, bereft of son and husband, and left as the only pro- 
viders for those who were too young to be drafted, hold out 
bony hands and look with hungry eyes to us while their 



BAPTIST WOMEN 81 

little children famish for milk and cry for bread. Other 
millions in Mohammedan lands denied satisfaction for their 
natural religious cravings and allowed only the crumbs of 
even a false religious faith, make their silent appeal to the 
compassions of womanhood in America. Millions in South 
America and other Catholic lands are the victims of super- 
stition and the guile of priests who have no fineness of soul 
to appreciate a woman's nature. These present need and 
opportunity which should at once break the Christian 
woman's heart and enlist her practical cooperation in mis- 
sionary service for womanhood. 
What can the American Christian woman do? 

1. Well, she can for one thing face the facts as they are. 
I admonish American women that they do not blink the 
facts, either as these facts represent the conditions of wom- 
anhood on the field, or conditions and duty at home. For 
instance, face this fact: You have comforts, know joys, and 
claim privileges to which your sisters are strangers. In 
every land where the Foreign Mission Board is preaching 
the gospel women are strangers to comforts which you 
enjoy daily. In their neglect and under cruel discrimina- 
tion, they go about their menial tasks with aching hearts 
and with unsatisfied aspirations to which long misfortune 
cannot quite reconcile them. Face then the fact of your 
superior circumstance and the duty to the unfortunate which 
your comforts and privileges impose. 

2. Another fact is : The world cannot be safe and wom- 
anhood safeguarded anywhere if womanhood is neglected 
anywhere. More than this, America cannot remain Chris- 
tian if the rest of the world is left either pagan or papal. 
And more still, America will become heathen if heathen 
womanhood is neglected in the lands where the majority of 
women live. The women of America must share their 
privileges or lose them. The infection of unregenerated, 
degraded, and stunted womanhood of the great Continents 
of Asia and Europe will certainly reach America if the 
Christianity of America does not reach the women of these 
Continents. Indeed, an infection and contamination has 



82 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

already begun here. A day at Ellis Island with the deposit 
there of European women and children with the marks of 
physical, mental, and moral neglect upon them, would startle 
some of our refined and cautious ladies, as would a case 
of bubonic plague discovered in their back alley. The great 
World War has broken down many seawalls, and the tides 
will henceforth roll in upon us from every land. There is 
no quarantining America against the moral ideals and re- 
ligious ideas of other nations. Our safety must be found 
in the Christianization of America and in such Christiani- 
zation as shall enlist American Christianity in the religious 
sanitation of the world. Another hundred years' neglect of 
the womanhood of heathen and papal lands will threaten 
the liberties and welfare of women in all lands. 

3. American women must qualify for this world service. 
They must resist pagan ideals which infest their own land, 
and some customs which outheathen heathenism. Lax mar- 
riages, marriage laws, cheap divorces, and those things which 
produce them, the cheap showhouse, and everything else 
which schools the young in vice and breaks down moral dis- 
crimination, lowers moral standards, and thus imperils soci- 
ety, must be dealt with effectually. And, with all the boast- 
ing of men, nobody can deal with these as effectually as can 
women. There was never a greater challenge to Christian 
womanhood than that which is presented to educated Chris- 
tian women in America to-day. The educated and profes*- 
sedly Christian women of America can, if they will, domi- 
nate the social life of this land, including social pleasures, 
public entertainments, feminine dress, and the rest. Have 
our women brains enough, force of character and courage 
enough, to put on a social program which is consistent with 
high moral principles and with Christian profession? Can 
they make social demands and create a social atmosphere 
in which cheap and initial immoralities shall wither like 
tender grass before frost or fire? They can do it if they 
will, and nobody else can do it. Women must do this in 
self-protection at home, and to qualify for service on behalf 
of their sisters abroad. 



BAPTIST WOMEN 83 

4. Another thing: Women at home can while saving 
themselves and saving their daughters and their sons, reach 
out hands to their sisters in other lands and inspire a min- 
istry to womanhood in all in our churches. The women 
of the dark lands await woman's ministry. They know 
that women can understand them better than men who are 
made of coarser fiber, and to whom God did not give the 
keener sensibilities which attune women to great and re- 
sponsive service. My sisters, continents of sorrowing, suf- 
fering, dwarfed, and maimed womanhood are waiting for 
your Christian ministries, your love, your sympathy, and to 
welcome your best ideals. Responding to such a call, you 
can strengthen the missionary purpose in your church, and 
the missionary desire and ability of your husbands, your 
fathers, your sons. Says Mrs. Helen B. Montgomery, 
"The men are for the most part the earners; we are the 
spenders of Baptist incomes. We can double or we can 
halve the contributions w 7 hich Baptist laymen will make." 
What a responsibility ! Remember that your extravagances, 
your unnecessary expenditures to gratify your vanity, are 
costing your sisters who sit under the doom of heathenism 
the very bread of life and those necessities of a woman's 
heart, love and tender care. It is yours not only to fix 
standards for your giving, but standards for your spending 
which will leave the men something to give, and who will 
be glad to give it under the inspiration of your example and 
the spell of your solicitude for your unfortunate sisters. 



in 

f A Word of Cheer Concerning the Women Who Are in 
This Program 

1. I cannot close without brief words of cheer and 
appreciation. The women at home are, in great numbers, 
increasing in beautiful devotion and in cooperation with 
us in the prosecution of our larger program. Women are 
praying. They are giving. They are volunteering. Thou- 



84 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

sands of them keep the morning watch and give systematic- 
ally of their savings, while unprecedented numbers of fresh 
college girls are offering their lives to be witnesses for 
Christ to the womanhood of other lands. Our volunteer 
list probably shows two girls and women for each young 
man who volunteers for missionary service. This is a 
tribute to the influence of mothers, female teachers, W. M. U. 
Mission Study Courses, and is an answer to prayers which 
go up daily to Him whose chief concern for things mundane 
is that the ripened fields shall be gathered before there is 
greater loss of the precious grain. Our women are coming 
into the missionary world program, and there is nothing 
which gives greater promise for the future than this fact. 

2. Daylight is breaking on the mission fields. We are 
beginning to get some of the first fruits from our mission 
schools for girls. The great majority of these girls find 
Christ before they have finished school. The holy experi- 
ence suffuses their faces with a new winsomeness. They 
come forth to advertise the gospel of Christ by that light 
which shines through their personalities, and which was 
never before seen by heathen eyes on land or sea. We are 
turning out teachers and workers and sisters and wives and 
mothers whose influence, like the fragrant flowers of the 
garden in springtime, is being wafted into the surrounding 
society. Our schools are growing in efficiency and gaining 
in patronage. A few of them are drawing girls from influ- 
ential families which both help in the support of the schools 
and strengthen their influence. Schools like the Eliza Yates 
Girls* School in Shanghai, Pooi to in Canton, the girls' 
school in Sao Paulo, and the new woman's department of 
the College at Rio de Janeiro, are commanding attention 
and winning patronage because of their products in culture 
and character. The Eliza Yates School has out of tuition 
fees saved $10,000 with which to erect a new and greatly 
needed building for the accommodation of its growing pat- 
ronage. Our women are being organized on the fields for 
effective Christian work, and through the schools, churches, 
and these women's organizations, leaders are being trained. 



BAPTIST WOMEN 85 

The influence and power of Christianity are cumulative. 
It was my pleasure to have some advisory part in effecting 
a W. M. U. organization in Japan and China in 1919. The 
ideals of the W. M. U. have crossed the Pacific, and women 
have begun to repeat in the churches of the Far East that 
which they have wrought in the churches at home. Con- 
tinue, my sisters, your mission study work, keep up your 
training in missionary giving, draw others into your prayer 
circles, and your eyes shall shortly see the glory of the 
King breaking through the clouds of heathenism and shining 
in the faces of redeemed womanhood in all lands. Baptist 
women have an important place in the Baptist World Pro- 
gram. 



CHAPTER VI 

A DECISIVE HOUR IN BAPTIST FOREIGN MISSIONS 

FOREIGN Missions holds a unique and commanding 
place in American and Baptist history, as indeed it 
does in the history of Christianity. Foreign Missions has 
been an organizing principle in the denomination : has called 
Baptists together in cooperative endeavor, been the inspira- 
tion of education, spirituality, Christian heroism, the spirit 
of sacrifice and devotion to Christ in gifts of money and 
of self. It has broadened the lives of individuals, expanded 
the denomination and enriched the churches with the pres- 
ence of Christ, in a manner for which they had no promise 
of being enriched had they not made the attempt to "go 
into all the world." By the prayer-life which the great 
undertaking has provoked among the women and others in 
the churches, the passion which the great theme has kindled 
in the pulpit, the liberality which it has inspired in the pew, 
it has vitalized formal piety and made heroes of young men 
and maidens who would have been devotees of fashion, the 
debauchees of pleasure, and the problem of pastors and 
deacons. The going out of young people from our churches, 
and the reports from the foreign fields of their trials and 
triumphs, have raised ideals, fostered intelligence, and stimu- 
lated purpose and activity in the members at home to which 
they would have been strangers had the influences of this 
work been wanting. 

We are a great denomination largely because of our rela- 
tion to and the benefits derived from this great enterprise. 
Consequently the history of the denomination shows the 
mark of this work. The most inspirational characters, the 
epochal events and luminous incidents in that history are 
related intimately to this Christ-ordained enterprise. How 
poor and how dull would be the history of Baptists without 
the thrilling and fascinating story of Foreign Missions! 

86 



A DECISIVE HOUR 87 

The pulpit itself would be impoverished without the illustra- 
tive material of Carey, his shoe bench and scholarship; of 
judson, his baptism, the lives of his wives, his prisons and 
his death; of Yates, his deeds and dying words; of Clough's 
long life, many converts and great baptizing ; and the word 
and works of a hundred others who in the interest of this 
enterprise went forth weeping, bearing precious seeds. 

What would American Baptists be as a denomination 
to-day if they had not entered into the duties and oppor- 
tunities of Foreign Missions and shared the benefits of this 
enterprise ? Let some one try to answer that question. 

It is one of the seeming fatalities that a work so glorious, 
a work which seeks in unselfishness to crown the Saviour 
King of kings, and which crowns the denomination in turn, 
should, above all else the denomination has attempted, have 
encountered through the years the opposition, the misrep- 
resentation and criticism which have characterized the be- 
havior of some toward this work. In the face of such, 
the friends and promoters of Foreign Missions have often 
had need to recall and cultivate the spirit of the Master 
when He said, "They know not what they do." 

But God's blessing abides upon this work. Upon every 
step we take on our way "into all the world" his pleasure 
and blessing are manifest, His promise is fulfilled, He is 
with us. 

The Foreign Mission work of Southern Baptists has 
reached a definite stage. We are precisely at the point 
where periods meet. Decisive are our acts right now. Con- 
ditions obtain and issues confront us which give significance 
and character to what we do at this stage of our progress 
in Foreign Mission work, and make this the most momentous 
hour for Foreign Missions in fifty years, probably since 
the beginning of the modern era. Here are some elements 
in the present situation. 

1. We are confronted by a new order of missionary 
operation. Leaders of the Union and Federation Movement 
in Foreign Missions have projected and well-nigh perfected 
a world-wide organization which is directed by some of the 



88 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

most astute minds to be found among the Christian forces. 
This movement is backed by the great missionary periodicals 
and a growing library of books. It is supported by munifi- 
cent gifts and bequests, and takes advantage of the Chris- 
tian sentiment which gathers about the Foreign Mission 
enterprise in particular. The leaders of this Movement, 
backed by such mighty forces and mighty influences, boldly 
and frankly avow policies which will, if made effective, 
put an end to the peculiar denominationalisms and effect 
radical changes in outstanding aspects of historical and 
present Christianity. No denomination will be allowed to 
preserve its identity and distinctiveness on foreign fields if 
this Movement is allowed to succeed. Baptists are called 
upon to subscribe to a platform which is explicitly sub- 
versive of their traditional beliefs and policies, as is shown 
by the following, adopted by a conference which the Move- 
ment conducted in Chile, and which is similar to the "find- 
ings" of such conferences held in other parts of South 
America, China, India and elsewhere: 

"cooperation and unity 

"With the passing of the years and the consequent growth 
of the churches of Chile, the conviction grows deeper and 
clearer to the workers present in this conference, that the 
aims of our Christian work in this country should be the 
creation of a united Chilean Evangelical Church undivided 
by the denominational distinctions which obtain in other 
parts of Christendom. As intermediate steps in achieving 
this end we approve all practicable measures of coopera- 
tion among the recognized Evangelical bodies. The follow- 
ing plan for cooperation is recommended : 

"1. Division or delimitation of territory to be readjusted 
from time to time. 

"2. The use of the common name for evangelical 
churches, for example, The Evangelical Church in Chile/ 



A DECISIVE HOUR 89 

"3. The use of a common hymn book and, as soon as 
possible, the use of a common version of the Bible. 

"4. The organization of a committee on cooperation 
and comity into which all recognized evangelical bodies at 
present at work in Chile shall be invited to have representa- 
tion. 

"5. An agreement for the transfer of members between 
all recognized bodies. 

"6. An understanding concerning the transfer of work- 
ers and the treatment of dismissed agents. 

"7. A general agreement for all to respect the discipline 
imposed by other evangelical churches. 

"8. A great nation-wide effort in evangelization. 

"9. That the present Bible seminary be enlarged so as 
to admit students from all recognized evangelical bodies. 

"10. To extend the scope of the present cooperative 
plan in the production of literature so as to admit all reg- 
ular bodies that may desire to participate in such work. 

"11. The founding of a union Christian hospital, or- 
phanage, and an institutional church as soon as it is pos- 
sible to do so. 

"12. An interdenominational Christian university for 
this part of Latin America to be located in Santiago." 

Baptists as well as others have been brought face to face 
with the issue of denominational extinction by this Move- 
ment. We have been invited to join the Movement in "the 
creation of a united Chilean Evangelical Church undivided 
by denominational distinctions which obtain in other parts 
of Christendom," and the above planks in the platform are 
the "intermediate steps in achieving this end." Such is the 
program of the Movement announced for the Continuation 
Committees backed by the Foreign Missions Conference of 
North America in every land. We have not seen a graver 
hour for denominational principles and evangelical Chris- 
tianity itself than that which has thus been announced. 

But Southern Baptists have met the issue frankly and 



po MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

the Foreign Mission Board and the Southern Baptist Con- 
vention have issued an ultimatum and the missionaries are 
cooperating heartily. There is no need, therefore, for any 
one to get nervous for the policies of Southern Baptist 
Foreign Mission work. These have been decided. We have 
chosen our course, but whether we run well or not is for 
Southern Baptists to decide by the manner in which they 
back their own program. The denominational program is 
inevitably doomed in the face of the forces which are 
operating the Union program unless Southern Baptists now 
concentrate their resources upon the support of their own 
Foreign Mission work. Personally, I am not afraid of the 
contest, if Southern Baptists will back the program which 
they have made. But let no one be deceived. The battle is 
not won. The contest will last many years on the foreign 
fields. It is there that effort hostile to the denominational 
program is being centered. 

2. The present world conditions make this a critical hour 
and a transitional period in Baptist missionary history. If 
Southern Baptists can rise to the exigencies of the hour 
and take advantage of the course of Providence at this time, 
they will glide swiftly into a new era which will in the future 
of Baptist history be as distinctly recognized as that which 
in English Baptist history is waymarked by the year 1792, 
in American Baptist history by the year 1814, and in South- 
ern Baptist history, 1845. No people can live up to and 
into a universal situation such as now exists, and ever 
after be the same. Baptists will start a new and glorious 
chapter of their resplendent Foreign Mission history now, 
or future historians will tell of their faithlessness and recre- 
ance, and the denomination will suffer the lack of that 
inspiration which is furnished when great men meet great 
hours of destiny in high courage, sublime faith and heroic 
deeds. If they are recreant at such an hour, they will 
consign their principles to defeat, and consent that others 
shall have the advantage of an hour which is peculiarly 
their own. We cannot stand still now and see the glory 
of the Lord. This is a time when all the circumstances 



A DECISIVE HOUR 91 

conspire to make steadfastness in the faith and abounding 
in the work essential and signal virtues of our people. 

Shall Baptists prove mediocre in Christian courage and 
Kingdom statesmanship, when the spirit of democracy is 
nurturing into life a republic in China, the biggest nation 
on earth; when our brothers in Russia and Roumania are 
claiming their birthright at the hazard of life itself; when 
the crucial battle between the Crescent and the Cross in 
Africa draws to its issue; when the day of the spiritual 
renaissance of our neighbor republics in South America is 
at hand, and when now society and Christianity must be re- 
established in Europe? If Baptists are not great in faith 
and deed, in dauntless courage and personal sacrifice now, 
they may as well get ready to accept inevitable obscurity 
for themselves and their principles, and to forfeit their 
claim to the rewards of faithfulness and good stewardship. 
This is a supreme moment in Baptist history, and only 
supreme effort will meet it worthily. Foreign Missions is 
the decisive Christian enterprise in the present world situa- 
tion. We have our opportunity and we have waiting lists 
of volunteers ready to man the outposts and lead the advance. 
Our God is by innumerable tokens signaling us to go for- 
ward. 

3. Another element in our problem, which makes the 
hour a critical one, is the accumulated obligations of our 
work. By obligations I do not refer simply to the amount 
which has been fixed as a budget for the year, although 
this budget already in operation calls for more than South- 
ern Baptists gave last year for current support. We have 
not made the budget as large as the needs of the old fields, 
to say nothing of great and swift opportunities in new fields, 
simply because there has not been the response to the 
situation by the churches and the brotherhood at large to 
justify it. But this budget does not represent our obligations. 
We have from year to year deferred obligations incident 
to a growing work until necessity has become acute. Many 
of the necessities for which no appropriations have been 
made are no less binding upon Baptists than those for which 



92 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

the Board has actually made provision in the annual budgets. 
We need the four million dollars which has been named 
with which to meet these obligations for the present year, 
and in order that we may seriously consider advance and 
expansion. Perhaps the largest missionary opportunity ever 
offered to Baptists by a superintending Providence is that 
which is offered them to-day. It is altogether probable 
that in the new nation of Russia, where the Baptist form 
of the initial Christian ordinance, baptism, has through all 
the centuries been safeguarded, we can, by taking this New 
Testament form and filling it with New Testament signifi- 
cance, so commend our principles and faith to the men and 
women of this great nation as to gain offensive positions 
which will in turn give us new advantage in the conquest 
of all nations for Christ and New Testament Christianity. 
And yet the stern fact stares us in the face and will not 
down, that Southern Baptists must meet obligations which 
they have already incurred on fields already occupied before 
they can take full advantage of opportunities which Provi- 
dence is offering them on other fields. The task is not 
an impossible one, but it is a duty which cannot be evaded. 
All who would see Southern Baptists enter the promising 
and providential fields, should keep in mind the fact that 
we cannot in good moral behavior ignore obligations which 
we have already assumed, and that it does not promise well 
for new advances that we allow ourselyes to suffer defeat 
in positions already taken. 

But for men who are willing to match their duty and 
ambition with courage, deed and sacrifice, which always go 
with great achievement, there is ground for hope and opti- 
mism. Southern Baptists can if they will. No denomina- 
tion on earth is in so good a position as Southern Baptists 
are to undertake at this hour a great denominational Foreign 
Mission program. There is greater unity and coherence of 
faith among us than among any other people. In numbers 
we more completely dominate the home territory which we 
occupy than any denomination in America dominates the 
territory in which it exists. We are, too, growing rich while 



A DECISIVE HOUR 93 

we grow in numbers. And our schools have placed at our 
disposal the men and the women who are ready and capable 
to lead. What more is needed ? Only these things : First, 
that we shall by prayer, consecration and dedication avail 
ourselves of spiritual fitness and force for the sacred task. 
Second, that those who are ambitious that Southern Bap- 
tists shall carry themselves with credit and register achieve- 
ment in the present situation, shall help them do it not by 
criticism, nor agitation of policies, nor advancement of the- 
ories, but leaving these matters to the great body of repre- 
sentative men who have been selected by the Convention to 
handle them, use their leadership and their influence in the 
effort to assemble the resources on which advance is 
dependent. 

The great need of the hour in the South to-day is friends 
for this cause who will help us get the money. The 
Foreign Mission Board is aware of conditions on the For- 
eign Mission field; is ready on short notice to order great 
advance. It is only waiting for supplies. Those who really 
love Foreign Missions and covet for Southern Baptists a 
great future, have their opportunity for service in coopera- 
tive effort for increased contributions. Third, let the men 
and women, into whose laps by providential good fortune, 
increased wealth has been poured, say to the Board, "We 
will supply the needs if you order the advance." Can there 
not be found among the noble men of our churches who by 
frugality, perseverance and integrity, have registered suc- 
cess in the face of difficulties, and who, with increasing 
wealth have retained their love for the Saviour and their 
passion of the Cross, many who will, at such an hour give 
generously, give as they never gave before, give as the cir- 
cumstances suggest and justify? It is the time of all times 
when men can with money make way for Christian triumph, 
hold this great enterprise steady to its task, and establish 
Christianity in the world. Shall not we, one and all, pray 
for vision and for the willing heart? 



CHAPTER VII 

THE NEW WORLD CONDITIONS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 

THE Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist 
Convention is now at work in eighteen nations of the 
earth. These nations present a great variety of type. Each 
nation has, so to speak, its own personality. Of course, 
there are things common to all men whatever their color, 
nationality, residence or religion. They eat, drink, suffer, 
love, hate, hope and despair. But China differs from Japan, 
Japan from Siberia, the Far East from the Near East, Pales- 
tine from Egypt. There is a difference between the Euro- 
pean states and contrasts between the South American 
republics. There is, too, a difference between pagan and 
papal lands, evangelical and Roman Catholic countries, as 
Macaulay recognized when he wrote his history. 

But the War has served as a sort of common denominator 
for all the variety of nations and conditions and has yielded 
for our profitable study certain common moral aspects of all 
nations, which must be taken account of and dealt with 
promptly and with decision by those who would reconstruct 
and evangelize the world. I want us to search for some of 
these common aspects of the world which the War has 
produced and left on our hands which together constitute 
what is properly and significantly called "a new world situa- 
tion." 

The particular elements which make up the universal con- 
ditions at this hour lay claims and responsibilities upon us 
and strongly commend the general missionary appeal to the 
Christian conscience. It is something new and tremendously 
impressive that these conditions prevail quite universally. 
They bear directly upon the missionary duty of the churches 
and compose an immediate missionary urgency. 

94 



NEW CONDITIONS 95 



New Universal Aspects 

1. There is throughout the world a new race conscious- 
ness. The race instinct has been accentuated and the race 
personality made more obvious and obtrusive. Japan is 
more Japanese, China is more Chinese, Italy is more Italian. 
In every nation men have become aware of themselves. 
There has been awakened a new impulse to self-realization. 
You will find this whether you go East or West. Travelers, 
missionaries and diplomats are encountering it and finding 
that they must reckon with it. The native citizen or indi- 
vidual cannot longer be patronized as formerly. There is 
not a tribe in Dark Africa which has not heard the echo 
of Woodrow Wilson's voice and assumed a new self-respect 
and betrayed a new dignity, and which does not demand 
a new opportunity for freedom and self-direction. It will 
become more and more difficult to keep even the most 
backward peoples in the status of subject races. 

2. There is a world consciousness. The self-center of 
nationalism is balanced by a new sense of internationalism. 
Men and nations everywhere have been quickened to a new 
intelligence and interest in the rest of the world. We have 
suddenly produced a younger generation of world-citizens. 
There has been begotten, too, a deep conviction that no 
nation can live to itself. The War has, so to speak, social- 
ized the race. All men have learned out of the experiences 
of the past half dozen years that there is no "Sunrise King- 
dom;" that a Hermit kingdom cannot be maintained. We 
must interest ourselves in the welfare of other nations, or 
be involved in their sins or misfortunes. The Chinese 
coolies from Shantung Province returned from France in 
1918 and 1919 to tell their neighbors that China was not 
the "Central Kingdom." They had gone West ten thousand 
miles ! 

3. There is a new race jealousy, suspicion, hate. The 
War stirred up mistrust and turned loose the vials of bit- 
terness. No sooner had the guns of war ceased to muffle 



96 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

our ears than we found that not only Germany and Austria 
hated England and France and Italy, but that these allies 
held scores against each other, and all were jealous, suspi- 
cious of and critical of America as well as of each other. 
Ally hates ally! The nations of Europe hailed President 
Wilson and gave him triumphal entry to their cities and 
named fashionable avenues for him, but he had scarcely 
reached Washington before they were casting mud on his 
gilded name at street corners. 

But suspicion, mistrust and hate exist not only between 
nation and nation but between class and class. There never 
was such lack of cordiality, friendship, and cooperation 
between employer and employee, seller and buyer. Men have 
lost faith in each other and do not respect each other's 
interests. 

4. Another universal condition is lawlessness and immor- 
ality. Bombs and shootings, hold-ups and kidnapings, di- 
vorce and illegitimacy are out of proportion to former times. 
Gangsters and yeggmen have dimmed the glory of Jesse 
James. There is more lawlessness, ungodliness and inhu- 
manity reported for one of our American cities in a year 
than our fathers read about in a lifetime. Probably there 
never was such universal lack of conscience for other men's 
property, time, or life as to-day. 

"The world is getting worse," says some one. Yes, so it 
is, and better too ; and it will get both better and worse as 
the end draws nigh. The devil grows more desperate as the 
Lord is mlore victorious. Many of the worst things are signs 
of Satan's desperation. There are more offensive eruptions 
of depravity in modern and advanced civilization than in 
stark heathenism. The bad are getting worse and badness 
looks worse in the waxing day of the Son of Man. A 
shaft of light shot through the darkness makes the banks 
of darkness on either side seem to be denser, blacker and 
more impenetrable. 

The great World War has accustomed men to blood, and 
human life is not precious in the eyes of many. But, thank 
God, more souls are being saved, more hungry are being 



NEW CONDITIONS 97 

fed, more children are being clothed than ever before. A 
great contest is on between the depravity of the race and 
the Christian spirit constrained by the Spirit of Christ. The 
light shineth in darkness and the darkness overcomes it not, 

5. There is a new intellectual awakening. The human 
mind was never so alert as now. Knowledge is running to 
and fro and men are eager for learning. This has its dan- 
gers and its advantages. This alert mind is often skeptical, 
critical, iconoclastic. Traditional faith and custom suffer. 
Much is being destroyed that millions have held dear, 
and all things must pass the crucible of unsparing criticism. 
In the electrical excitement some small minds exhibit f reak- 
ishness, and intellectual absurdities assume an intellectual 
appraisement they do not merit. Small men parading under 
a scholarship which others have achieved, make much of 
"the modern viewpoint," and cultivate a shallow supercilious- 
ness for much that has its foundation in solid crypt of truth 
and intellectuality. 

But serious men are in quest of the truth and there is a 
hospitality for it. There is a great open market for those 
who have what the world needs. If we take advantage of 
this attitude of mind, we can turn it to account for the 
furtherance of the gospel of Christ. Eyes that have been 
closed and ears that have been deaf are now open. Minds 
which have been locked in prejudice are to-day hospitable 
to the truth. The truth is new in most parts and new 
things are popular in this age. 

6. There is a new consciousness of God in the world. 
Men to whom God was never before real or necessary are 
finding Him to be the one great indispensable reality. They 
have come to know that there is a Friend of right and 
righteousness, who is stronger than armaments, who is 
beyond the reach of artillery, and who gives invincibleness 
to a righteous cause. God so confounded the enemies of 
right and came so palpably near to those who needed His 
help during the war, — so near to statesmen as well as to 
the wounded and dying who from hospital wards called 
upon Him — that good men have been reassured of Him and 



98 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

bad men tremble at His nearness. Skeptics have become 
conscious that they are in the Almighty's presence. We 
have found that we cannot get along without Him, and 
when we cannot and are ready to acknowledge it, He is 
found to be near. We have felt all else which men thought 
real and reliable crumble under foot. God is real and the 
only unfailing refuge. 

7. There is a new craving for the spiritual. Materialism 
has become a dry and empty thing which cannot longer 
satisfy the hungry soul. Men have found that a material- 
istic age or civilization grinds to powder the finer things 
that belong to the spirit ^f man. Material and mechanical 
views of Christianity are to-day as far below par as Euro- 
pean exchange. Ecclesiastical legerdemain is severely dis- 
counted. Mesmeric Christianity is passing, and passing 
first of all on the mission fields. Men who have hitherto 
tolerated formalisms and ecclesiasticisms, ritualisms and 
incantations, will not now be satisfied until their spiritual 
natures are honored and fed. The multitudes are not only 
inquiring for Christianity but for Christ, and will not be 
satisfied until they gain admittance to His immediate pres- 
ence and try Him for themselves. The soul of the world is 
restless and can find rest in Him only. The world's heart 
has been broken and only Christ can heal broken hearts. 
Since the War the world has gone fashion-mad and pleasure- 
mad, but already these things stale. Souls famish on the 
garish tawdries of the world and cry out for spiritual sus- 
tenance. 

8. There is among the nations a new realization of need 
of moral motive and power. In some nations for a while 
men in high places thought they saw in modern Western 
civilization that which would mend their outworn systems. 
They have come to find that modern civilization only adds 
necessity to necessity and that somewhere an inward power, 
a new moral energy, a sustaining principle for personal and 
national character must be found. The leaders of modern 
progress and the seers of all nations are alarmed at the 
danger of national collapse under the weight of modern 



NEW CONDITIONS 99 

progress unless the nations can be under-girded morally. 
Economic and political progress have put a strain upon na- 
tional foundations which these are not able to bear. A 
Japanese editor who said that "We have imported the ma- 
chinery of modern civilization but have neglected the moral 
oil to keep it running" spoke a parable which fits condi- 
tions in every nation that is being stirred by the new and 
larger life of the world. You cannot rear modern civiliza- 
tion upon a heathen foundation. 

9. There is a world-wide awakening of and a new eval- 
uation of women on every mission field. Evangelization 
has been delayed by the ignorance, the superstition, the 
bigotry, the fanaticism, and inaccessibleness of women. 
This fact has militated greatly against the advance of the 
Kingdom of God. Women on the mission fields as every- 
where are mighty factors, but their influence has been for 
the conservation of the old order. Men would let heathenism 
rot but for tjie women, and Roman Catholicism could not 
dominate a nation nor a community in all the world without 
the help which women give it. Men would by their indif- 
ference and mistrust of it let it die of neglect if the devotion 
of women were interrupted. There is no more signifi- 
cant fact on the mission fields than this : that women are 
outgrowing traditionalism and are becoming conscious of 
their rights, their privileges, their duties, their opportuni- 
ties. 

Here again there is both danger and advantage, oppor- 
tunity and difficulty, for Christianity. Oh, how loud is the 
call of God for wise leadership among our women ! A great 
danger on the mission fields is that, disillusioned and dis- 
gusted with ancient faiths, they will miss the gospel of 
Christ which alone can crown womanhood and make wom- 
anhood glorious. 

There is a challenge and a testing at home. Women in 
America, where their freedom has been won, will demon- 
strate whether they can be trusted with their own freedom. 
If they make a mess of their liberties here, and the new 
woman fails to heighten respect for women, what may we 



ioo MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

anticipate for the womanhood of other lands among whom 
the constraints and restraints of the gospel have not been 
put in force? 

10. There is failure everywhere of the old forms of faith. 
The mighty crisis of recent years has tried them and they 
have been found wanting. Shintoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, 
Romanism, and the rest have failed to stand the test and 
have lost advantage in the religious competitorships of the 
world. The World War gave every religion a supreme 
chance and a testing challenge. 

I am not unaware of the seeming "revival" of Buddhism 
in Japan, of Mohammedanism in Africa, etc. This is not 
an expression of the genius of these faiths. It is not revival 
and initiation, but imitation — and imitation is a sign of 
weakness. Such imitation is always mechanical and lacks 
the life and energy which spring spontaneously out of the 
very heart and nature of Christianity. 

So far as heathenism is concerned, it has rightly been 
described as "a chaos of religion, faith, and morals." No- 
body expects heathenism pure and simple to survive the 
ages. The great religious systems and ecclesiasticisms are 
not so quickly but as certainly doomed. The immobility, 
inadaptability, irresponsiveness, indifference, and ineffective- 
ness of the great ecclesiastical systems in the presence of 
world needs and the world's challenge of recent years 
constitute a lesson in missions and a premise for a mission- 
ary forecast of the future. 

11. The religious question is drawing to issue. The 
contending forces have come to closer quarters than ever 
and the battle is at the gate. Men everywhere realize that 
the issue is pending and that decision cannot be postponed 
indefinitely. The world in its sorrow and extremity has 
discovered its need of religion and is sure to sit in judgment 
on all candidates to learn which can serve it best. Enlight- 
enment is penetrating dark corners of the world and the rays 
of knowledge are being turned upon the defects and short- 
comings of religion as well as other things. A sharpened 
intelligence is penetrating the depths of religious supersti- 



NEW CONDITIONS 101 

tions. The public press is not yet ready to help turn on 
the light, but men are learning that ignorance, illiteracy, 
poverty, immorality, characterize every civilization, every 
one without an exception, which is dominated by either 
heathenism or Romanism, and where these have uninter- 
rupted opportunity to make demonstration, their consistent 
and prolific fruits are ignorance, hunger, neglected child- 
hood and oppressed or abused womanhood. This the world 
is learning. 

12. We conclude this enumeration of new world condi- 
tions by repeating here what is said in another of these 
"messages," namely, that there is emerging out of universal 
conditions the sure outlines of a universal religious faith. 
This is a fact so significant that no summary of world 
conditions which invite missionary attention would be com- 
plete without it. Impelled by the intellectual, political, 
moral, and social ideas which have been quickened by the 
War, a religion which can serve the age and command the 
respect of intelligence and the moral confidence of the 
future is lifting into form and definition out of the confu- 
sion of the hour. This much of this religion is already 
discernible and definable in clear outline : It is to be rational, 
spiritual, democratic, practical. It will be a rational faith 
versus irrational superstition and irreligious rationalism; 
a spiritual religion versus crass spiritualism, gross mate- 
rialism, and papal sacramentarism ; a democratic brother- 
hood and organization versus hierarchical authority and 
ecclesiastical legislation and prelatical overlordship ; it mil 
be practical Christianity versus pietism, ascetism, and such 
religious anomalies as an indolent orthodoxy and church 
affiliation as an entree to society. No religion or religious 
group can prosper in the world of moral, social, political, and 
religious ideas which is now forming, if it lacks the above 
cardinal virtues. The slogan of the spiritual democrats Df 
the future will be, No pope, cardinal or bishop to dictate ; no 
ecclesiastical assembly to legislate ; no priest to mediate. 

Do Baptists hold a faith which is the counterpart of these 
elements of the coming universal faith? If they do, then 



102 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

by such tokens we may know that the day of Baptist oppor- 
tunity is breaking into dawn and noon around the world. 

Heathen superstition and ecclesiastical and priestly in- 
terpositions must pass into the limbo of religious archaisms. 
Since 1914 kings, emperors, czars, and kaisers have either 
been dethroned or stripped of their ancient powers. Wit- 
ness Germany, Russia, Austria, Bohemia, etc., etc. There 
has been a wholesale dethronement of these political auto- 
crats. In an hour when men are throwing off the yoke of 
human authority the obligation to create in them spiritual 
impulses is solemnly great. The hour is desperately peril- 
ous without Christ's steadying hand on a democratized 
world. 

Crowned and mitered ecclesiastics will go next, begin- 
ning or ending with the audacious "Vicegerent of Christ" 
on the Tiber. The recent crowning of Pope Pius XI 
filled the world with disgust. His lordly assumption, his 
befrocked retinue, his servile satellites, each and all are 
anachronism in this day of democracy. Men know that 
such claims and such ecclesiastical pomposity do not repre- 
sent the lowly Jesus. The ecclesiastical hierarchs must go 
the way of political autocrats with advancing enlightenment 
and spiritual freedom. Their usurped and cherished 
thrones of authority are not safe in the world because democ- 
racy is not safe with them. 

But religion purged and refined the world will need and 
have. Religion is its main hope, its chief necessity. 

The Significance of These Things 

Now what is the significance of this survey of new world 
conditions? What is there in all this extraordinariness of 
the hour to command the attention of the Christian men 
who are behind the missionary enterprise? Let me give a 
brief answer to that question. 

1. There is a new missionary urgency and imperativeness. 
Religion, the Christian religion, and the Christian religion 
in its best form and at its best only can deal with a world 



NEW CONDITIONS 103 

situation such as this. All these elements of the new 
order, these common aspects of a world situation, are moral 
in their character, and as moral questions have their roots 
in the religious question. Have you set your heart on 
the Disarmament Conference? You are doomed to disap- 
pointment. In the first place, that Conference was not a 
disarmament Conference. That is a most significant fact. 
It proposed to reduce arms but not to abandon and outlaw 
the sword, the cannon, the torpedo. If two of your neigh- 
bors have a misunderstanding and are carrying two guns 
each, and they should, under the persuasion of mutual 
friends, agree to carry but one pistol, they might still have 
a fight with fatal results. That which establishes peace in 
this world must deal with the warring spirit of man and 
subdue hate and revenge. That is the task of the mission- 
ary rather than the diplomat. 

2. This world situation makes up an American responsi- 
bility. During the War America assumed to speak for 
democracy, for small nations and weak ; to champion moral 
idealism in the realm of internationalism. Such preach- 
ment of lofty ethics as President Wilson indulged was 
never before undertaken by a nation's leader and spokesman 
since human hate slew the Prince of Peace. Henceforth 
America will be judged by her lofty standards. By our 
preaching we have increased our responsibilities. Nations 
are investigating nations and America perhaps more than 
any other is being investigated. This is a new fact and 
belongs to conditions which call for serious reflection. Men 
are learning our language and entering our educational in- 
stitutions to learn our philosophy of life. They are touring 
our country, studying our government, seeking to know us, 
the secret of our power, and to discover the foundations of 
our civilization. We have great responsibility. 

America has the most adequate supply of the gospel with 
which to meet the world's need and of money to transport 
it. Men and women here have been more completely and 
generally emancipated from priestcraft and tradition and 
hold the missionary message in greater purity than in any 



io4 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

Hand of the globe. Our nation has a wealth of 350 billions, 
while the British Empire, Italy, and France have a com- 
bined wealth of but 247 billions. Against our 350 billions 
is a war debt of 7%, while against the 247 billions, combined 
wealth of Britain, Italy and France, is a war debt which 
amounts to 45%. We have the gospel which the world 
needs and we are able to finance a world program with less 
sacrifice than any Christian people on earth. 

3. This world situation presents a new Baptist oppor- 
tunity. What is there in the new demands which is not in 
the old Baptist faith? Some talk much nowadays about 
democracy in religion, about self-governing churches. It 
is evident that many of these orators and writers have 
stumbled upon what they take to be new phrases and new 
ideas, but which are commonplace among our people. The 
mind of the Christian world has simply found a new ad- 
justment to our contention. We have known no other sort 
of church than a self-governing one. And when Baptists 
say church they mean a church and not a denomination. 

As a part of the argument for the indigenous church on 
the foreign field, the denominations are being admonished 
not to carry historical and sectarian accretions to these fields. 
The Baptist contention has been always and everywhere 
that these should be abandoned. We have insisted that 
organized Christianity be stripped of inherited ecclesiasti- 
cisms, ritual forms, prelatical offices, in short, of all un- 
scriptural and anti-scriptural officers, forms, and formulas; 
and that Christian men shall accept the Bible and be bound 
by what it teaches and by what it teaches only. Do this 
and what is left will be a truly indigenous Christianity, 
both for America and all other nations. Everything that 
ought to be eliminated from the Christianity which we 
preach ought to be eliminated from the Christianity we 
practice. The religion of the New Testament is for "all 
the world." 

The denomination which is patterned after the New 
Testament has no need of change to meet the needs of 
China or any other land. Let the advocates of the in- 



NEW CONDITIONS 105 

digenous church point out a single particular in which 
Baptists have inherited an unscriptural or an anti-scriptural 
article of faith, office, form, ceremony, and by their very 
standard of orthodoxy Baptists are called upon to abandon 
it. But until some one does this, the call to leave inheri- 
tance behind when going to the mission field, does not apply 
to Baptists. Let those who preach the indigenous church 
for China practice it in America. The church which Amer- 
ica and China alike need is not an American or a Chinese 
church, but a Scriptural church. And the new world con- 
ditions are giving such churches their big opportunity. 
From the beginning Baptists squared their faith to this 
demand, declined to acknowledge the historical accretions, 
and much of their unpopularity has been due to their age- 
long beseeching of others to do so. What others would not 
do upon the appeal of Baptists, they will be forced to do 
upon the demand of the future. 

4. The world situation is significant because it is 
transient. The opportunity will not wait. One has said 
that "heathenism is so ripe that it will spoil unless gathered 
quickly." Every man who knows the mission fields of the 
modern world knows that doors of opportunity have been 
jarred open by the World War. He also knows that these 
doors will not stand open for us if we are slow to enter 
them. If we are to buy up the great opportunities now on 
the market, we must act promptly. No power on earth 
can ever turn the nations back. The world will never again 
be the world it was. Men have been shaken out of their 
former selves and are faced forward. They move into a 
future which they will make with or without our help. They 
will carry with them their jealousies, suspicions, hates, and 
with these mold the future and mar it if we do not now 
reach them with a regenerating, renovating, transforming 
gospel. If we are to save the future, we must save the men 
of to-day. These men have already begun to make the 
future. Opportunity now so great and alluring will gradu- 
ally fade with every passing hour of our hesitation and 
neglect. 






106 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

How Does Such an Hour and Such Conditions Find Amer- 
ican Baptists? 

First of all, it finds them with great campaigns started 
for funds and for recruits with which to meet the extraor- 
dinary foreign mission situation. These campaigns w^ere 
started under the inspiration and urgency of the new world 
conditions. Nothing had taken place in America so un- 
usual as to start campaigns so exceptional. It was God's 
call which rang through the new world conditions and awoke 
Southern Baptists in Atlanta in 1919, and it is this which 
more than anything else has kept their 75-Million Campaign 
alive and compelled response to its appeal. Events have 
shown that there was no exaggeration of the world con- 
ditions which would follow the War. Need is as great, op- 
portunity as promising and as urgent, and the danger of 
religious neglect in the work of rebuilding the world is as 
serious as we were warned it would be. 

And yet there is temptation to accept through familiarity 
a situation as a commonplace and to fall back into com- 
placent ease. That the world has reached its moral crisis, 
no one can doubt who familiarizes himself with the facts 
and is capable of intelligent appraisement of them. That 
God and religion only can meet this crisis and see society 
past this crucial hour of destiny does not admit of debate. 
To an alarming degree, the weal and woe of the world are in 
the hands of American Christians. We can at this pivotal 
hour decide whether it shall be weal or woe in many lands 
of the globe. The moral strain of new world conditions is 
at this hour too great for many nations unaided by the 
religious forces of America. Take Russia as an example. 
The moral foundations have given way. Whether the na- 
tion is to be rebuilt of wood, hay, or stubble depends largely 
upon the part which America takes in its reconstruction. 
Indifference to facts like these will condemn and disgrace 
American Christianity. 

Nothing could so strongly commend the campaigns which 



NEW CONDITIONS 107 

Northern and Southern Baptists are at this time conducting 
as these new world conditions. The foreign mission agen- 
cies of the denomination are set peculiarly to meet these 
new conditions, even as the campaigns were inspired by 
them. How can any Christian man review the extraordi- 
nary world situation and not feel his heart well-nigh pulled 
out of him, all his selfishness burnt out, his very soul merged 
into the compassions of Christ for a distraught world for 
which we have healing consolation and redemption? How 
can he do it and fail, even at great sacrifice, to pay his 
pledge to and give his support to these campaigns? Some 
one has said that "A Christian is a man whom God has 
trusted with the souls of his fellowmen." If that is true, 
measure if you can your individual responsibility in an hour 
like this. The world's supreme peril confronts us with 
supreme obligation. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE RELATION OF THE MISSIONARY MESSAGE TO MISSIONARY 

SUCCESS 

LOOSE and false views of Christian truth, which have 
become so common and so flagrant here at home, have 
reached the mission fields. Error is a great traveler. It 
uses many means of transportation and propagation. It is 
frequently a stowaway, and sometimes gets to the mission 
fields in the baggage of missionaries, tourists, and others 
who touch the lives of foreign peoples. Some mission 
boards have grown lax in the doctrinal requirements of can- 
didates. The number of foreign students in the American 
schools have greatly multiplied, and many of these return to 
their home-lands with their heads stuffed with "the phi- 
losophy of Christianity" rather than the gospel of Christ 
The free-lance university professor has his chance with 
large numbers of these foreign students, who, in their im- 
maturity, are easy victims to the all too common university 
views of Christian truth. Some of the Christian colleges 
also have in them men who are impatient of any statement 
of positive Christian faith. Young men go to the field 
under such influence unprepared to meet the strong tides 
of skeptical thought which move about them in their new 
environment. The increasing flow of radical literature, in 
English and translation, carries its germs into all intellectual 
circles on all mission fields. 

The union movements have fostered indiscrimination for 
truth, taken the edge off personal conviction, and opened the 
doors of sentiment, through which pass the enemies of 
Christian truth on the arms of those who, to prove them- 
selves big brothers, have discarded distinctive faith. The 
apostle of the brotherhood of man fraternizes with the ene- 
mies of God and the gospel. 

108 



.THE MESSAGE AND SUCCESS 109 



UNITARIANISM 

But perhaps the most insidious error now being carried to 
the mission fields of the world is that which Unitarians are 
propagating. They are devoting especial attention to Euro- 
pean fields at this time. They epitomize their gospel : 

"The Brotherhood of Man, 
The Fatherhood of God, 
Salvation by Character." 

This faith has produced such spiritual drouth at home 
that Unitarianism is dry in the stalk. It is almost barren 
of converts and preachers in this country, and has become 
dependent upon evangelical preachers to propagate its mes- 
sage. Unitarians do not send missionaries to the heathen, 
but work by proxy, that is to say, through evangelicals, to 
propagate their faith. Unitarian sermons which do not 
draw hearers nor make converts are being printed by the 
ton and furnished to young preachers at home and abroad. 
Evangelical France is seriously affected by this propaganda, 
and reports from Europe tell of incoming tides of literature 
in which Unitarian error is dressed up attractively. Certain 
immature and superficial minds are easily impressed by 
ancient heresies when these are presented in the guise of 
modern and liberal thought. This fact is known by some 
men who hold positions of influence and accounts for the 
show of originality and breadth which they make in using 
Unitarian slogans to weaken the claims of evangelical 
truth. 

The result is, therefore, that there is doctrinal unsound- 
ness on the mission fields. Many faithful missionaries who 
went out to give their lives to the propagation of the gospel 
have become alarmed in recent months by the inroads which 
error is making, and have sounded the trumpet, calling to 
their aid their brothers and home boards to save the mission 
fields from inundation by error. If some of the "boards were 
not themselves too much under the influence of the radicals 



no MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

to heed the call, rebuke error in their workers and decline 
to send forth men who are without a positive message, the 
day could be saved much quicker on the foreign field than 
at home. Conditions there are not yet as bad as they are 
here. 

We are gratified to reflect that the Foreign Mission Board 
of the Southern Baptist Convention saw the dangers of the 
union movement, and defined its missionary policies in 1916, 
and, seeing that error ran in the wake of this movement, pre- 
pared, in 1919, a "Statement of Belief" for the examination 
of its candidates which has made it almost impossible for a 
man to receive appointment by this Board who has, by what- 
ever influence, been robbed of the faith of the Commission 
under which mission boards are supposed to operate. 

The So-Called "Social Gospel" 

The false antithesis between doctrine and social service 
has contributed to the complexity of the situation on the 
foreign field as at home. The new champion of the "Social 
Gospel" thinks that a doctrinal ministry is the enemy of 
practical Christian living. Some men seem to be able to 
think only with one lobe of their brains at a time. What- 
ever they happen to be stressing is antithetic to something 
else. Truth with them is not only in contradiction to error, 
but to truth itself. They do not see the supplementary rela- 
tion between doing and doctrine, experimental Christianity 
and Christian truth, between sociology and theology. Be- 
cause one is true the other must be false. The genius for 
false antithesis is a mark of a little and yet a dangerous 
mind. 

But there is more the matter with the Social Gospeler 
than this. In the first place, he fancies that he is entitled 
to a place in the foremost ranks of the thinkers, because 
he is an advocate of something new. He berates the teach- 
ing of the old school, and, alleging that it did not produce 
social fruit, charges the discrediting omission to a doctrinal 
ministry. Now, as a matter of fact, social service is no 



THE MESSAGE AND SUCCESS in 

new thing among Christian men. There is, to be sure, a 
difference in the way it is done and it has, in the mouths of 
its modern advocates, assumed the dignity of an "ology" — 
sociology. Sociology sounds better to the modern ear than 
the words, "Do good to all men." Sociology is a science to be 
taught a class : doing good is a duty to be practiced by all 
Christians. Social science tells a few folks how to do some- 
thing for the neighborhood; the old custom was for each 
individual to do his duty by his neighbors. Old preachers 
did not know so much about sociology, but they did teach 
their hearers to visit the sick, the widows and the fatherless ; 
and no neighbor to the Christian man in the older communi- 
ties was allowed to go hungry or without a watcher by his 
or her bedside in time of sickness. The modern paid nurse 
knows better how to take the pulse than our grandmothers 
did, but she does not bear a more effective testimony to 
the Christian spirit and to unselfish and thoughtful Christian 
love. Under the social regime we have more organizations 
and reports, but I am not sure that we have more social 
workers. It is a false comparison to charge the lack of 
social service to the men and women of the old school who 
did not send representatives to discharge their social obliga- 
tions, nor themselves go about neighborly ministrations 
garbed to advertise their mission. It is a false comparison 
to represent theology and sociology as contradictory sciences. 
One is a doctrine ; the other is duty. The doctrine produces 
the practical service. Too much emphasis upon social 
service and too little upon evangelism is affecting doctrinal 
soundness on the mission field, and, in the end, will reduce 
the purest missionary results. It is not, therefore, a question 
of theology versus sociology but one of such relation of 
these and such proportionate emphasis as will secure the 
desired missionary results. 

The "Social Gospel" is spoken of as though it were some- 
thing superior to the gospel of grace. Indeed, it is pre- 
sented by some as the only gospel. As a matter of fact, 
to state the case bluntly, there is no such thing as a social 
gospel. Adjectives before gospel do not magnify, but minify 



ii2 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

the gospel. The word gospel compasses contents which 
make full its meaning and without which it is incomplete. 
Eliminate these contents, and you have no gospel. There 
are, of course, social duties which are binding upon all men 
and upon Christians in particular, of which the best of us 
are derelict; but, we repeat, there is no such thing as the 
social gospel. To use the word thus shows one to be in 
error as to what the gospel is. The gospel is the most 
prolific source of social deeds, but social service belongs to 
the realm of Christian duty and not theology. The one is 
for Christian practice ; the other is for Christian preaching. 
There is no contradiction nor antagonism between them. 
The one is the fruit of the other. The gospel is the world's 
generator of social impulses, the fertile soil of which neigh- 
borly deed is the perennial fruit. To belittle evangelical 
doctrine in an effort to magnify social service convicts one 
of being a novice as a religious thinker and teacher. Orphan 
asylums and other humanitarian institutions and benevo- 
lences sprouted and have found their fertility in hearts 
which have been mellowed by the gospel of Christ. They 
are nurtured by the truth which declares that men redeemed 
by the self-renunciating Christ are by that redemption made 
debtors to all men. 

Some are ready to substitute the social program for the 
Commission. If China's millions of sick, hungry and un- 
fortunate are to have ministered to them the compassions of 
Christ, if we are to create in China a social conscience which 
will compel wealthy Chinese themselves to feed their hungry 
brothers, we must keep things in their place. We must 
apply to the dead social conscience of the Chinese people 
the life-giving Word of God. The preachers of the social 
gospel in China who neglect the evangelistic message will, 
if left alone for a season by other workers, eventually find 
themselves surrounded by dry bones. The Christian enter- 
prise will, even in the hands of radicals, move on for a 
period under its gathered momentum, but if it loses the 
vital elements of the impulse-giving gospel, it will presently 
slow down in social activity. Unitarian and atheistic thought 



THE MESSAGE AND SUCCESS 113 

have no vitalizing or propulsive quality or power. The 
nations of the world to-day are, in their civilizations and 
social conditions, a contemporaneous and convincing witness 
to the power of the evangelical gospel and the impotency 
of everything else heathen, ecclesiastical and intellectual. 
The gospel of Christ in its evangelical interpretation is the 
ofie and only fecundating principle which has as yet been 
applied to the social and moral order of the world. Noth- 
ing else has the mysterious power to re-create character, 
revive the social conscience, and rebuild a collapsed race 
or civilization. Social deadness or deterioration is found 
wherever the evangelical gospel is not found. 

Missionary Success 

Now, what is the relation of our message to missionary 
success? If what we have said already commends itself 
to the reader as true, that relation should be evident. We 
may, however, discuss the point more directly. 

It is one of cause and effect. There can be no mission- 
ary success without the gospel. Success is partial where 
the gospel is impaired. There is to-day no peril to the 
missionary enterprise like the peril of an emasculated gospel. 
If the gospel of Jesus Christ is substituted, mutilated or 
corrupted the missionary enterprise is doomed to fail. If 
we can save the gospel, we can save the world. If the 
saving elements of the gospel are lost out of our missionary 
message, there is neither hope nor remedy for humanity 
sunken in the mires of its depravity. 

This is a question for the denominations, the mission 
boards and those who train young men and women for mis- 
sion service to face quickly and frankly and in the fear of 
God. Doctrinal unsoundness is already affecting the mis- 
sionary enterprise. Error has its missionaries. Propa- 
gandism is organized and endowed. The Christian message 
is unique, and its uniqueness is essential to the success of the 
missionary enterprise. 

Responsibility rests upon our mission boards and upon 



ii4 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

our colleges and seminaries, but finally, of course, upon the 
denominations which control or should control all of these 
agencies for the propagation of the gospel of Christ. Our 
colleges and seminaries stand at the crucial point in our 
battle line. They can more quickly than any other agency 
correct so much of the evil as exists among Baptists. Our 
teachers and schools have the first chance at young men, 
when in their thinking they are beginning to venture into 
untried fields of religious investigation and are most liable 
to get started in wrong directions morally and mentally. 
If the teachers are without a positive message, if they 
have no convictions concerning the truth, if they do not give 
convincing explanations, but leave young men to find their 
own way, often supplied with the implements of the enemy 
with which to guide their investigations, then doctrinal 
unsoundness will wax greater at home and abroad. 

After having some opportunities to study missions in the 
home lands and foreign lands, I give as my deliberate opinion 
that schools are either to be the greatest allies of the churches 
in giving the gospel of Christ to the world, or they are to 
prove at last to have been the most deadly enemies of this 
enterprise. I believe that those who discuss our schools 
should do it in fine self-restraint, and with a conscience not 
to weaken the influence of any man or school who or which 
is a helper to the truth. I suppose none of us who love 
the gospel of Christ and believe it to be the hope of the 
world would deny that there are a few teachers in our 
schools who are hesitant to state their views of Christian 
truth nor that some teach positive error. Such men ought 
to be dealt with by those who are responsible for the work 
which they are doing. The risk of neglect to do so is too 
great to be taken. If it is our business to propagate the 
gospel, we should not pay anybody to deny it. 

The writer is, however, glad that after many years of 
dealing with the products of our schools and missionary ap- 
pointees at home and abroad, he can say that these schools 
have contributed immeasurably more to the faithful procla- 
mation and propagation of the gospel of Christ than they 



THE MESSAGE AND SUCCESS 115 

have to the dissemination of error. Speaking for the mis- 
sionary enterprise, with which I have been identified in all its 
organized departments for work at home and abroad, I 
must say that we owe a great debt to our schools and to 
the faithful men, who in the quiet seclusion of the class- 
room and under the necessity of economical living, have 
poured the resources of their lives — mind, body and spirit — - 
into those who, passing from under their care, become the 
leaders of our people and the exponents of our faith. This 
fact should not be forgotten when we are discussing schools 
and teachers. 

The bane of religious teaching in our schools is more in 
the text-books used than in the teachers employed. A task 
which the denomination has not yet set itself to is that of 
preparing the text-books which guide students in the study 
of religious subjects. Here is a challenge to some of the 
men in our seminaries and colleges. We have men with 
equipment and talent equal to this task, and they have in 
the performance of it an opportunity to serve God, their 
denomination and their day and generation. We are con- 
ducting Christian schools, but too often use text-books 
which are produced by men who, so far as the gospel we 
hold is concerned, are thoroughly anti-Christian. 

It gives us satisfaction to say that as regards soundness 
of their missionary message, the missionaries of the Foreign 
Mission Board are the advocates of sound views of Christian 
truth, and the propagandists of a pure gospel, and we believe 
that, with possibly a few almost insignificant exceptions, 
the same can be said of the missionaries of all the Baptist 
societies. These men and women are the products of our 
schools, let it be remembered, and their fidelity to the truth 
reflects credit upon the schools which men of just judgment 
will take into account. These missionaries have stood the 
test amidst incursions of error on all fields. We thank God 
for them, their faithful witness to and their courageous 
defense of the truth, and their accompanying passion for lost 
men and women. We have soldiers of the cross who are 
suited for service in exactly such times as these which have 



n6 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

come upon us, and for carrying to successful issue the battle 
which is now raging. It is our solemn duty to reenforce 
these faithful ones by sending to their help others who 
hold, are held by, and who will hold forth the truth as 
it is in Christ and His Word. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE* 

THE Great War raised many questions, some of them 
religious questions. It caused men to ask such ques- 
tions as these: "Has Christianity failed?" "Have we a 
religion worth propagating?" "Will Christianity survive the 
changes now in process?" I do not wonder that men with 
hearts, with souls, and human feelings cast about for satis- 
fying answers to such religious questions in the face of the 
universal tumult and the fears which made many hearts 
stand still. How could men read the daily reports of human 
suffering, the accounts of destruction of the flower of Euro- 
pean young manhood, and not be exercised to find a recon- 
ciliation of these things with a religion which has taught 
us to love our neighbors as ourselves? When the War 
claimed our own sons, the religious questions were brought 
closer home to us and many in America asked questions 
which they had never asked before. Some had their re- 
ligious faith shaken, while others were in doubt and knew 
not what to believe. Personally, as never before, I found 
myself falling back on one thought and one religious truth 
as a solace for my soul and the only prescription for quiet- 
ness of spirit. That truth is, God is God. Men may froth 
in their rage, but God Almighty is on a throne "high and 
lifted up," and no human hate or frenzy can take the reins 
of government out of His hands. There is quiet above the 
clouds and there is quiet under and in the clouds for those 
who reflect that God cannot be defeated. 

True religion will survive because God is God. His pur- 
poses take account of circumstances and will fulfill. He is 

*For more extended discussion of certain matters raised in this 
chapter, see the author's "Unique Message and Universal Mission 
of Christianity. ,, 

117 



n8 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

the source and foundation of all true religion, and all true 
religion must survive. 

True religion will survive both because God is God and 
man is man. Religion is not style or fashion. Religion is 
as fundamental as nature itself. The familiar words of 
Sabatier, that "man is incurably religious/' are true because 
religiousness is of man's nature, inborn and ingrained. "A 
man's religion is the chief thing about him," said Thomas 
Carlyle. Therefore until nature and human nature change 
religion will survive all change. It is not only the chief 
thing about a man; it is the chief thing in the life of any 
nation and of universal humanity. Not all nations have 
concerned themselves with art and literature, with science 
and philosophy, but every creature of every nation has 
instinct for religion. 

Human progress is conditioned upon the purity of religion 
among the respective human groups more than upon any- 
thing else. Religion is the creative, productive, reconstruct- 
ing thing in human life. Neither man nor society can real- 
ize the higher values of life without it. Religion will, more 
than anything else, explain the civilization of every nation 
in the world. It will explain not only Africa and China, 
but it will explain North America, Mexico, South America, 
and the nations of Europe. Huerta, Madero, Villa, neither 
one nor all of them explain Mexico. The religion which 
is administrated from the Vatican in Rome explains both 
the country and these leaders. 

The indictment upon which Roman Catholicism will at 
last be condemned before the bar of enlightened public 
opinion is that it has consistently, uniformly, and universally 
bred ignorance and poverty among the mass of its devotees. 
There is no escaping that judgment. Circumstantial evi- 
dence was never stronger. Take unbiased testimony con- 
cerning Mexico, or any or all the sunny isles or republics 
of the South. In every case it is incriminating. The land 
may be naturally rich and the people naturally bright, but 
it is the same with the masses of the people wherever Rome 
has had time and unprotested opportunity to make the dem- 



FUTURE RELIGION 119 

onstration. Illiteracy, illegitimacy, rags and want are the 
prolific progeny of the papacy. The census tables give 
unimpeachable evidence. 

The outstanding aspects of nations are those which are 
most attributable to religion. There is no other force which 
bears so directly upon the sources of life as does religion. 
There is no indication that religion is perishing from the 
face of the earth. It is not a question of whether religion 
will survive, but of what is to be the outcome of religious 
competitorships. 



Religion is inseparable from human progress. Unless 
human progress must cease, religion must continue. 

1. Men cannot realize even their intellectual aims without 
religion. Intellectual advancement is conditioned upon re- 
ligious knowledge and makes profounder knowledge of 
religion necessary. Religion is the proprietor of a certain 
class of facts which are necessary to a rounded scheme of 
knowledge. Material science and intellectual philosophy fall 
short of their own goals without the help of religion. The 
man who evades the religious question is no example of 
superior intellectuality. To the contrary, he gives evidence 
of mental imbecility. Says Goethe, "The real and deepest 
things of the world's and man's history, to which all other 
subjects are subordinate, is the conflict between faith and 
unbelief." Tindal in his famous Belfast address said that 
"religion will assuredly be handled by the loftiest minds 
when you and I like streaks of modern cloud be melted 
into the infinite azure of the past." Lofty minds find the 
religious question a congenial one. The intellectual progress 
of the world is in the direction of religion when it moves 
on the plains of greatness and toward its goal. 

Men cannot pursue the intellectual sciences into the higher 
regions to which these sciences ascend without finding need 
for a knowledge of religion. No branch of the intellectual 
sciences is a cube. The edges of every science are serrated. 



I2Q MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

You cannot, for instance, finish your arithmetic without 
some knowledge of algebra, nor your algebra without some 
knowledge of geometry. Philosophy may be considered 
the advance grade in pure intellectual culture, but the fron- 
tiers of philosophy penetrate the borders of the religious 
question even as science touches the borders of philosophy. 
All great scientists and all great philosophers have been 
great meddlers with religious questions. Dr. John Clifford 
tells us about a gathering fifty years ago composed of the 
leading men of art, science, and literature of that day. A 
dinner was served, and after dinner Dean Stanley was 
elected to preside over the discussion, and he chose as a 
subject for deliberation, who shall dominate the world? 
Prof. Huxley with his passion for reality and his hatred 
of sham and humbug, arose and said, "The nation to domi- 
nate the future will be one that is faithful to facts." Ed- 
ward Miall replied, "It is true that the nation to dominate 
the future will be the one that is faithful to facts, but it 
must be faithful to all the facts and the fact of facts is God." 
God who is the explanation of all facts is the goal of intel- 
lectual progress as well as the boon of spiritual quest. 

2. The race cannot realize its social and civil aims with- 
out religion. The social progress of the world requires a 
settlement of the religious question. Social conditions are 
determined by religion chiefly. The fundamental aspects 
of a nation's social life are those which religion more than 
anything else can and must regulate. The great religions 
produce their respective types of society. They are not 
only organizations but they are organizers, and they organize 
on a great scale. There is symbolism in the fact which 
Prof. Kidd has cited, that the church spires claim first atten- 
tion when from some eminence one gets his first view of a 
city, town, or village. Men can never come to a realization 
of a society based upon brotherhood until they learn the 
secret and the laws of society based on the nature of divine 
Fatherhood. Society will not reach its goal until men in 
their religious quest reach their goal. A Chinese student, 
graduate of one of our great American universities, with 



FUTURE RELIGION 121 

much show of intellectual pride, told the writer that he had 
returned to his own country to teach his people that the 
hope for China was in "the Christian philosophy of the 
West." We were in China on missionary business, and as a 
part of our mission told him that Western philosophy was 
only the evanescent fragrance of the Christian religion in 
America; that Christian civilization created the University, 
and not the University the civilization. 

3. The world has no chance to realize the best political 
ideals without religion. The beginning of a true democracy 
is a man's discovery that he is a responsible being possessed 
not only of rights, but owing duties to society. A nation 
may have socialists and anarchists without a religion, or 
even by the help of a bad religion, but there is no democratic 
Utopia for any nation a controlling element of whose citi- 
zenship has not learned that the soul has a master and 
that master is God. Lift the restraints of autocracy from 
above any people before you have generated the constraints of 
the love of God in them, and you will have not democracy 
but social anarchy. The march of democracy is in the 
wake of the evangelical missionary and the progress of 
the Kingdom of God. This nation has been the inspiration 
of democracy throughout the world only because of what 
religion has done for us. The democratic ideal has flowered 
in evangelical atmosphere. 

4. Men cannot realize real business success and security 
without religion. There is not a vocation or profession, 
a calling or business, which does not need religion to give 
it respectability and stability. Nearly fifteen years ago a 
Japanese implored his emperor to lift the embargo on the 
Christian religion, saying that the Western civilization is 
the leaf and blossom of Western religion, and that American 
religion is the root and foundation upon which our pros- 
perity rests. A few years ago a Japanese business man 
gave $100,000 as a fund out of which to teach Christian 
moralities to the coming young business men of Japan. 
About the same time a Japanese newspaper offered several 
prizes for the best poem written by Japanese. The three 



122 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

chief prizes were taken by Japanese Christians. Men must 
have the help of religion to attain the highest success, and 
the more they become aware of this, the stronger the prob- 
ability that religion will survive all change. 



II 

But the signs of the times not only furnish convincing 
evidence that religion will survive, but they give strong 
evidence that sooner or later one religion for all men will 
be realized. 

1. The increasing acquaintance of men with different 
religions and their respective fruits is a sign that one re- 
ligion will after a while be chosen as the best. Knowledge 
is running to and fro and up and down the earth. An 
inventory of the world's religions is being taken. A survey 
of religious conditions is in progress. Thoughtful men are 
collecting data upon which to make a fair appraisement of 
the world's religions. Theologians, missionaries, scientists, 
statesmen, tourists, are recording values and reporting their 
observations. The college students are studying the returns 
and weighing the evidence in favor of this and that religion. 
After a while an impartial jury will be found to bring in a 
verdict. 

2. Certain agreements have already been reached. It is 
now conceded by the best minds that there is but one Su- 
preme Being, one central and absolute Unity ; that mankind 
constitutes a common brotherhood ; that men have common 
natures, religious needs, and common moral foes to right 
living; that they have a common destiny. Now given one 
God, a universal brotherhood of men, possessed of common 
natures, with common religious needs, with a common des- 
tiny, what is demanded? Manifestly a common religion. 
That is axiomatic. If there is but one God, it is certain 
that He cannot at last put His imprimatur upon but one 
religion and that religion the best of them all. One religion 
and one only can claim His seal and validation, and one 



FUTURE RELIGION 123 

only can meet the common needs of a universal humanity. 
3. The great religions are assuming a missionary offen- 
sive and declaring thereby that the issue between them must 
be settled. Mohammedanism is rivaling Christianity in its 
quest for converts. Buddhism in Japan and China has 
learned to imitate Christianity, is starting Sunday Schools 
and teaching children to sing. Those who have penetra- 
tion to discern the deep and steady undercurrents of human 
life and thought know that these currents set in one direc- 
tion. Present circumstance may disturb the surface, but 
divine purpose and decree hold them to their courses and 
toward their ultimate goal. All men who think truly think 
toward one another. One religion for all men is the focal 
point of all great thinking upon religious questions. Noth- 
ing gives such unity to groups within the human family 
as does a common religion. The ideal for human brother- 
hood and for peaceful relations among men was never so 
ascendant as now, and this is a sign of the times which 
betokens missionary achievement and one religion for all 
men. 



in 

But the present tendencies signify something more. They 
justify the forecast not only of one religion for the race, 
but they indicate certain distinct marks which must char- 
acterize the final religion. 

1. The final religion will be rational. The human mind 
is expanding. It is gaining zest for fact and gradually 
breaking down the walls of ignorance, superstition and un- 
reality. The minutest atom of matter and infinitesimal life 
have become significant, and the truth about them is found 
to be worthy of a philosopher's profoundest and most pro- 
longed duty. The growing enlightenment reveals that heath- 
enism is in the jungles, Romanism is in the wilderness, and 
Christian Science is on the back trail. Men with brains 
will not be persuaded that there is virtue in a string of 



124 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

beads, or religion in kissing the marble toe of an image, 
or crossing the face with a little foul water. The intelli- 
gence of the world will eventually cast away holy water 
and priestly mesmerism, just as men have already bashfully 
taken the horseshoes from over the door and the rabbit's 
foot out of their pockets. The men of to-morrow will not 
join Christian Science in declaring the microscope and tele- 
scope are liars. The universal final religion will be rational. 

2. The final religion will be spiritual. Psychology has 
accredited the religious experience. Scholars as well as theo- 
logians are calling for a religion which is spiritual and ex- 
perimental. Men have heads, but they have hearts and 
souls, and the demands of heart and soul are as imperious 
as the demands of intellectuality. Men have their spiritual 
hungers and thirsts which are as mandatory as a child's 
cry for bread or water. Neither materialism, philosophy 
nor priestly genuflections will satisfy the enlightened human 
soul nor satisfy the demands of an enlightened public. 
There is sure to be a growing demand for the very words 
of Christ which are "spirit and life." 

3. The final religion will be democratic. The thrones 
of kings are crumbling and autocracies are becoming obso- 
lete. Since 1914 crowns have been snatched from the heads 
of czars and kaisers, kings and emperors, and monarchies 
have been turned into republics in the whirl of human revo- 
lutions. Wherever crowns are still worn their possessors 
are shorn of all real kingly authority. One may be certain 
that religion, which is a thing of the soul and finds junction 
with the seat of manhood, will not long tolerate in its realm 
that which has been discarded in politics. Individual souls 
everywhere are emerging from the reign of their masters. 
They are finding that he who has Christ for his Lord 
needs none other, and that Christ is too great for the soul 
to divide its tribute between Him and another. 

The march of the world toward democracy is sure to 
relegate many religious leaders. "Buddhism," says a dis- 
tinguished writer, "takes no attitude toward democracy/' 



FUTURE RELIGION 125 

So much the worse for Buddhism. So much the better for 
democracy! Romanism has taken an attitude, but that 
attitude is hostile to the soul of freedom and to direct per- 
sonal approach to God by every individual. There has been 
in these last days nothing quite so incongruous with the 
spirit of the times as the crowning of a religious monarch 
on the banks of the Tiber in the month of February, 1922. 
But the laws of progress are in process of eliminating such 
inheritances from the days of monarchical rule, and popes 
will shortly pass to the curio shelves of the museums and 
their present devotees will claim their inalienable rights and 
exercise their soul freedom in the democracy of the race. 
In the awakening of man's soul to the supreme privilege of 
personal communion with God, he will be done with human 
paternalism. 

4. The religion of the future will be practical. It must 
bring forth fruits meet for repentance. It will prove that 
it is from God by saving and serving men. The badge of 
religious kinship will be the garment of service. The brief 
months which have succeeded the Great War have witnessed 
unprecedented progress in practical religion. This will for- 
ever discount those forms of religion which are irresponsive 
to the world's need. The best religion is mankind's best 
friend. That religion which lifts the fog of ignorance from 
a people, and lifts society to plains of moral purity, culture, 
comfort, p_ersonal value, thus helping men fulfill themselves, 
will at last be man's favorite. 

Rational, spiritual, democratic, practical — these are marks 
of the coming religion. These elements are emerging 
out of universal conditions and outline definition is already 
possible. Such a religion will help man fulfill himself in 
mind, in soul, and in all social relationships, and will convert 
his redeemed and heightened powers into helpful ministries 
for his brothers of every nation, class, and condition. The 
religion of the future promises to be altruistic beyond any- 
thing which men have ever known in all the long history 
of the world. 



126 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

IV 

What religion can stand the test of these conditions which 
the times are putting upon religion ? Not heathenism, for it 
is not rational ; not Mohammedanism, for it is not spiritual ; 
not Roman Catholicism, for it is not democratic. Not 
one or all of these, for alike they are not practical. They 
do not minister to public enlightenment, nor strengthen 
the case for those very things in modern civilization which 
are the source of human progress. These types of religion 
have not produced the conditions and tendencies of the 
present and cannot endure the ordeal which they will face 
when the real forces in modern civilization have a little 
further advanced their lines, and these lines have a little 
closer converged. All this is but saying that evangelical 
Christianity and this alone is equal to a crisis and a crucible 
for religion like that into which we are surely being borne, 
impelled by the irresistible forces of the modern world. 
Many religions will shortly be found to be obsolete. Many 
of the accretions which in the course of history have attached 
to religion will in the new day that is dawning fall from 
Christianity as the barnacles fall from the hull of the great 
ship when she comes from the great sea and moves into the 
fresh water of the river. Many things that have attached 
themselves to religion cannot possibly survive; but that 
which at the first was religious truth, religious experience, 
religious life and force will be such in the end. A little more 
enlightenment, a little more spirituality, and a little more 
democracy in the world, and heathenism and the Roman 
hierarchy will capitulate to reason, the demands of soul 
freedom and experimental religion. 



What are the chances for the Baptist faith and the Baptist 
people in the face of these tokens? To my mind these 
conditions constitute nothing less than the call of a great 
opportunity for the Baptists of the world. If we stand forth 



FUTURE RELIGION 127 

with our vital message and do not lose our distinctive note 
in the tumult incident to the adjustments of the hour, we 
shall shortly realize the dreams and see fulfilled the prayers 
and hopes of saints and sages who have wrought in expec- 
tation of such an hour. 

Mind you, I say stand forth with our principles. I do not 
say stand by them merely. We shall not enter into our 
inheritance by simply guarding our faith. It is true that 
missionary activity without a gospel message is wasted labor, 
but it is also true that there is no such thing as a vital 
orthodoxy without the missionary spirit and practice. We 
must hold the truth fast and we must hold it forth. To 
attempt to preach without a pure gospel is heterodoxy, but 
in idleness to boast of our faith is hypocrisy. If the 
Baptist people can be persuaded to make faithful use of 
their message, great victories are assured. 

The world's call for a religion which is reasonable, spir- 
itual, and democratic indicates that the Baptist day is at 
high noon. I can hear the very doors of Baptist oppor- 
tunity creaking on their hinges in the changing order — in 
Central Europe, in Russia, in China, and South America. 
What is the meaning of our consistent defense and of our 
appeal to private judgment and of individual responsibility? 
Of our insistence upon personal, intelligent obedience to 
the Word of God? Our age-long contention for the per- 
sonal rights of every believer, equality among church mem- 
bers, and for independent, self-governing churches? Have 
we not all the time been thus paying tribute to intelligence 
in religion, raising a demand for popular enlightenment, 
and declaring for a rational religion ? Have we not always 
risked our cause upon an appeal to intelligent personal 
choice rather than to predilection? We have declared the 
authority of revealed truth rather than venerated tradition. 
Have not Baptists appealed to personal conviction and 
decision rather than to biased parental proxy, to conscience 
rather than to ecclesiastic authority? A popular demand 
for a rational, experimental, democratic religion does not 
take Baptists by surprise. 



128 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

What has been the meaning of our contention for per- 
sonal regeneration before any one is admitted to the priv- 
ileges of Christian ordinance or church membership? The 
new recognition of the reality of religious experience, and 
the demand for experimental spiritual religion is all in the 
direction of the doctrine of the new birth which with Bap- 
tists has been the primary condition of church privilege, and 
which alone admits to Christian fellowship. Those who 
still defend ceremonial membership will suffer serious handi- 
cap before the world's demand for experimental religion, 
but it is equally obvious that those who have consistently 
affirmed the reality and necessity of personal experience of 
God and consistently denied the religious value of mere form 
or ceremony, will not be called to revise their creeds in 
the future. 

How will the coming age of democracy affect our can- 
didacy ? Have we not fully tested democracy as a working 
policy in religious matters, and thereby set up a claim for 
recognition as its thorough-going champions? The friends 
of those forms of religion which require a vicegerent to leg- 
islate, or a priest to mediate, or an ecclesiastical court to 
adjudicate in religious matters had better get busy revising 
their creeds. Already some of the religious sects are em- 
barrassed, finding that their ecclesiastical paraphernalia is 
a handicap in winning the allegiance of the modern demo- 
crat. They told me in Italy that eight thousand priests 
and monks, who during the war saw the world through 
their own eyes and got a breath of personal freedom, de- 
clared upon their return to Italy that they would never 
again put on the gown. The Baptist people have been at 
some disadvantage in not having individual ecclesiastical 
dignitaries through whom they could voice their rights, but 
in the absence of such they have trained millions of indi- 
vidual men in the principles of democracy, and we are 
just coming into the day when the combined voice of mil- 
lions of democrats will swell to a chorus which will be 
heard around the world as no single voice can be heard; 
and the voice of this multitude will be in unison with the 



FUTURE RELIGION 129 

soul of the race and the popular religious ideas of the 
future. 

The day for Baptist diligence, faithfulness, sacrifice, and 
great missionary activities is upon us. The circumstances 
all favor us. It is evident that the leadership of the world 
has in recent months fallen to this Western Hemisphere. 
It is here that the world's school of democracy is located, 
and the Baptist people are the best qualified teachers in 
this school. Is it not a good fortune that we have here 
our greatest numbers, our greatest wealth, and are able 
from this base to relate ourselves to Baptist opportunity in 
the new world order, and to have decisive influence in the 
contest of religions which is certain to issue in one religion 
for all men? 



VI 

How can our Baptist people best take advantage of the 
hour? To that question I would make answer, first of, 
all, that we can do this by enhancing the value rather than 
cheapening the value of our faith. If we are ashamed of 
it the world will not be proud of it. We must so preach 
and practice our faith as to popularize it. By our faith- 
fulness, our zeal, our sacrifice, by the gifts of our sons and 
daughters and our money to this holy crusade, we will fix 
our own valuation upon our faith, prove its worth to the 
worfd, and declare our interest in the question of the world's 
final religion. Circumstances incident to the Great War 
have lifted the religious question before the eyes of the 
world and set the whole world thinking about religion 
as men have not probably thought of it in a century. What 
we do with our religion and for our religion will be done 
under the eyes of the world, and men will get their impres- 
sion of its worth by what we seem to think it worth. Men 
with a Christian faith which meets the needs of times 
like these can by their fidelity gain an advantage for it in a 
day which formerly they could not have gained in a decade. 
If at such a time American Baptists, with the smile of 



130 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

God's favor upon them in their material prosperity, put a 
fifteen cent valuation on their religious faith, they will doom 
it and themselves. 

Political democracy was found so precious, or so objec- 
tionable a thing, so worthy to be fought over that the nations 
gave to the contest 9,998,771 young men who sleep the sleep 
of heroes on battlefront and in war cemeteries. Another 
20,997,551 carry the marks of their heroism in their bodies 
as the proud tokens of their devotion to democracy. In 
material evaluation of the issue the world spent $337,946,- 
179,657 to decide whether democracy or autocracy 
should rule the world. Baptists will by the size of their 
missionary collections, by the gifts or the withholding of 
their sons and daughters, and by the intrepid or hesitating 
advance of their missionary lines determine what the world 
shall think of their interest in the present religious issue. 

Baptist belief is in demand on the religious markets of 
the world to-day. There never was such a demand for 
the faith which we hold. If we let the hawkers of inferior 
articles of faith, the vendors of patent creeds, and the 
peddlers of heretical cults do the big business of the hour, 
we shall prove that we are not faithful stewards of the 
manifold mysteries of God, lose Heaven's favor, and see the 
tides of opportunity turn at their flood. 

If we would not lose advantage when the contest is 
at the issue, Foreign Missions must be lifted out of all 
parities with single departments of Christian service and 
small individual Christian enterprises, and receive the atten- 
tion and the support which is commensurate with its great 
magnitude and importance. Somehow Baptist leaders must 
provoke Baptist people to enlarge their thinking and their 
-contributions. A World Program, a contest with the great 
religious forces of the world, an enterprise which has already 
projected its lines into eighteen nations of the earth, must 
command a larger thought and support than Foreign Mis- 
sions has ever had. Look at the amazing figures which 
represent men and money put into the European War. 
Wise men knew that democracy was imperiled, and that 



FUTURE RELIGION i 3 f 

its fate would be determined not in centuries, but in months, 
and the resources of the nations which champion democracy 
were requisitioned and thrown into the issue. It was by 
this supreme effort and sacrifice that the tide of battle 
was turned and that democracy was saved. There is a 
lesson in this for the Baptists of the world. Foreign Mis- 
sions must have a fairer proportion of our gifts. Our 
people must hear about it from the pulpits, in the Sunday 
School, and through the public press. The circumstances 
of the world are converging at the point where the religious 
question of the future is to be settled. It is the most 
probable thing that in a few years will be determined what 
religion will rule the future and what particular form of 
that religion. If Baptist people wish their principles to be 
regnant in the religion and civilization of the future, they 
must now give and sacrifice, pray and proclaim. The nations 
of the earth are feeling after democracy, and genuine reli- 
gious experience is the mother of real democracy. It is 
worthy of any man's gold, of any man's life, to see the 
Baptist people embrace their opportunity now after long 
centuries of prayer, of persecution, of misinterpretation, and 
misrepresentation. After long years of seed sowing and 
patient waiting, we have come to a supreme hour. May 
wisdom and grace be given us to contribute our part, and 
make our witness decisive in what is to be the religion of 
the future! 



CHAPTER X 

THE UPLIFTED EYE* 

1AM here to speak to young preachers. I bring you an 
admonition to cultivate the uplifted eye. I believe 
that this will have value for you as preachers of the Gospel 
of Christ, as leaders of men and conductors of the affairs 
of the Kingdom of Christ. 



First of All, the Uplifted Eye Wjll Correct Temptations to 
Which Preachers Are Liable. 

The preacher is tempted to focus his attention and his 
ministry upon nearer and narrower interests. He needs a 
corrective for this temptation. 

1. Like all men preachers are engaged by temporalities. 
Sometimes this temptation breaks into the harmony of 
their spiritual life and absorbs them in the midst of spir- 
itual needs and opportunities. Jesus found his disciples, 
his chosen preachers, concentrating on something to eat in 
the presence of spiritual need and opportunity, and sought 
to break the spell of temporalities, to which he himself was 
not a victim, by telling them that h$ had meat to eat of 
which they knew not and calling them to look upon the 
harvest fields which are ripe and great and plenteous. While 
they were thinking in terms of a morsel of meat and a loaf 
of bread, Jesus was thinking of precious granaries. It is 
a sad fatality in the preacher's life when either because of 
the failure of his church to provide for his temporal neces- 
sities, or through his own inordinate love for money, he 
lapses from his high calling to think too much about tem- 

^ * This address was made to the students of the Southern Bap- 
tist Theological Seminary and the colloquy which characterized it 
is retained. 

132 



THE UPLIFTED EYE 133 

poralities. I would lift up an ideal for any minister who 
feels himself falling a victim to overmuch concern about 
things for the body. There are probably young preachers 
in this hall who will do well to examine themselves, making 
a searching inquiry as to whether they have already begun 
to think about good salaries, fine parsonages, and pleasant 
circumstances. If in the pursuit of your duty God leads 
you into pleasant paths of Christian service, you are to be 
congratulated, but I warn you against the lure of worldly 
comforts and worldly gain. If you yield your life to this 
downward pull, you will never reach the heights of great 
freedom and power as ministers of Christ. 

The preacher of our day needs to be warned not only 
against the temptation of temporalities for himself, but 
against keying his ministry to overmuch concern for the 
temporalities of others. The true preacher often walks 
among the poor and nothing which concerns his fellow r men 
is a matter of indifference to him. It is his duty to see 
that his own life and the life of Christian men whom he can 
influence express themselves in terms of compassion for the 
unfortunate. There is, however, ground to fear that many 
ministers have gone beyond the legitimate concern for the 
temporalities of men and women among whom they live 
and concern themselves with social programs more than with 
the gospel of redemption. They have been cheated out of 
the larger vision by the proximate and material need. 

I have been much impressed in studying the Commission 
and the circumstances amidst which it was delivered. All 
about the Saviour were men and women who were under 
hard circumstances. Poverty, sickness, and injustice were 
evident on every hand. Yet choosing circumstances under 
which to deliver his final commission in which once for all 
he gathered up those things which belong to the preacher's 
vocation, he said not a word in his Great Commission about 
ministering to poverty, the rebuke of injustice, the reform 
of state, but confined himself to those things germane to 
propagation of the gospel of redemption. Does any one con- 
clude that Jesus was unconcerned about those who suffered 



134 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

from poverty or injustice? Such a conclusion would belie 
the life and ministry of Jesus. Jesus was not indifferent to 
anybody's misfortune. Nevertheless, amidst circumstances 
so impressive as to fix indelibly upon all his creative ideal for 
his ministers, he said, "Go ye into all the world and preach 
the gospel/' He knew that that gospel had in it the power to 
transform and reform, and that temporal mal-adjustments 
would find their correction more quickly as a consequence 
of gospel preaching than by any other means which could 
be adopted. Preach the gospel, young man, and the world 
will pretty shortly make a social program without your help, 
and that social program will have in it the vitalities which 
the gospel begets. The first thing fixed by the Great Com- 
mission is a world missionary program — "Go ye into all 
the world and preach the gospel"— and after that come 
baptism and the rest that is comparatively important. 

2. Even the spiritual needs, the inimediateness of sin and 
sinners with their legitimate claims upon ministers, some- 
times, I fear, cheat preachers out of the larger vision which 
is necessary to a great ministry. Certainly no one is in 
reality called of God to preach the gospel who is indifferent 
to the sin and sinners of his community. He must in faith- 
fulness call the men and women of his community to re- 
pentance. He will, however, get inspiration, quickening, 
passion, and gain greatly in effectiveness for the work at 
his door if he cultivates the uplifted eye and scans the 
expansive and ripe harvest fields. There is evangelistic 
value for the preacher in a missionary outlook. The man 
who gets the world on his heart will not lack compassion 
for sinners whom he elbows on the streets of his town. But 
just as a mother may in her devotion to her own child forget 
her duty to her neighbor's child, so the preacher may suffer 
the legitimate and imperative claims of lost men about him, 
who for a lifetime have rejected the gospel of Christ, to 
distract attention from the millions in other lands who have 
never had the opportunity to accept Him, We will be better 
evangelists as we are more missionary. 

3. The narrow views and sympathies of the preacher's 



THE UPLIFTED EYE 135 

audience sometimes tempt him to shun missionary studies, 
missionary sermons, and missionary collections. It is a 
perilous temptation. By such a course the minister loses 
vision and his people never get it. Every preacher has in 
his congregation those who say, "We have the heathen at 
home, and until we meet our home expenses, we have noth- 
ing to send abroad." There is little doubt that many deficits 
in pastors' salaries are due to derelictions in the pulpit. The 
uplifted eye, the world vision, is a remedy for this tempta- 
tion and a cure for such a situation. That church which 
sets itself resolutely to the task of giving the bread of life 
to the heathen will not allow its pastor to go hungry. 

4. The insistence of the approximate interests of the 
local pastorate and the home departments of our denomina- 
tional enterprises shut off many preachers from the views 
which lie along the distant horizons of the Kingdom of 
God. An English author asks, "Have you a window open 
toward the sunset?" and moralizes on the value of such a 
window. Surely the minister of Christ should have a 
watchtower from which he can scan the harvest fields and 
get inspiration from the whole world of Christian endeavor. 
If the preacher is not careful, he will shorten his observation 
in his round of church relationships. His Sunday School, 
his prayer meeting, his deacons' meeting, his church building 
enterprise have legitimate claims upon him, but if he focuses 
attention on these local aspects of Kingdom service, he 
will soon lose zest for them, and they will be cheated out 
of the best service of which he is capable and that which 
the church in all its departments needs for the full develop- 
ment of Christian character. 

Even the denominational councils may prove a tempta- 
tion to the preacher who does not form the habit of 
training his eyes for the larger vision. In every council 
of which he is likely to be a member home enterprises 
are certain to claim the largest attention. The home de- 
partments of our religious work, state missions, Christian 
education, home missions, and the like, have larger repre- 
sentation in all denominational conferences than does for- 



136 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

eign missions, although foreign missions includes all the 
departments of our religious activities that are included in 
the whole home program. Our programs for religious meet- 
ings assign to single departments of our home work as much 
time as they do to all the departments of the work in all 
the rest of the world. Foreign Missions is fortunate to 
secure an hour or two in any association or state conven- 
tion, to say nothing of board meetings in the states and 
associations. This may perhaps, to a degree, be necessary, 
but it constitutes a temptation and a peril for the minister. 
It is only by the exercise of his will and a diligent training 
of his eye on the great far-reaching aspects of the Christian 
task that he will avoid classifying foreign missions as equal 
only to a single department of home work and escape the 
peril of an altogether too narrow view of Kingdom service. 
He will keep up a fight within his soul or threaten his vision 
and lose inspiration which he should gather from the wide 
whitening fields. It is not argued that anything connected 
with the home work should be foreign to the minister, but 
that he should give due and proportionate attention to all 
that his denomination is doing. The writer wrote a book 
on Foreign Missions while he was a Home Mission Secre- 
tary, and whether any one else has been benefited by that 
book, he is quite certain that out of the study which pro- 
duced it there was gathered inspiration for his task on the 
home field. Breadth and balance are necessary to highest 
ministerial usefulness, and in order to secure these, he must 
seek to see the whole round of Christian duty in true per- 
spective. 

5. The mental habits of the preacher may easily become 
a barrier to the larger vision. You will be students when 
you have quit the study halls. You will continue to study, 
or you will begin to stunt, but the study habit can easily 
become a temptation and a snare. Those of you who have 
intellectual ambitions will be tempted to aspire to be scholars. 
Those of you who have oratorical gifts will study to be 
speakers and orators. Certainly the preacher needs, if he 
can command them, both scholarship and oratory, but let 



THE UPLIFTED EYE 137 

me suggest that if you want to be leaders, you will include 
in your reading and in your studies a generous course in 
missionary literature. There is no literature which more 
tingles with life or throbs with the spirit of God than mis- 
sionary literature. Missionaries and missionary leaders have 
furnished preachers with literature which is a telescope 
through which to observe the harvest fields. Much of the 
literature that is put out for preachers is very full of schol- 
arship, but very empty of the gospel and of inspiration for 
Christian activity. 

I would not have you to be less studious, but would have 
you be wise students. Scholarship will have great value 
for you if it is the right sort and you know what to do 
with it. I had a letter some months ago from a friend. 
He is a college and seminary graduate, a man of fine char- 
acter, and he has been a student of a certain type. He 
wrote me a pathetic letter. He said the people of his con- 
gregation and community could not appreciate his scholar- 
ship, and he would Hke me to help him get a pastorate 
where the people wc^e more congenial with his intellectual 
life. Well, to tell you the truth, I did not appreciate his 
scholarship either, although I appreciate the man and would 
rejoice in the privilege of serving him if at the same time 
I could serve the cause of Christ. What is scholarship for? 
Is it not to broaden our knowledge of men as well as things, 
and to better help us adapt ourselves to the service of men ? 
That scholarship which breaks a man's sympathy with the 
most illiterate man in his community is a false scholarship. 
A good and constant supply of missionary literature will 
save the scholarly minister from this temptation and fatal 
blunder. God is in His world to-day and Kingdom events 
are in this very hour crowding each other in a most mar- 
velous way. Keep in touch with these, and you will be in 
touch with the men and the women of this generation to 
whom you preach and whom you should influence, and 
whose lives you may expand. You are called to be more 
than sermon makers. You are called to be Kingdom build- 
ers, and if you are to be wise master-builders, you must 



138 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

cultivate the uplifted eye, for the Kingdom has great ex- 
panses and broadens every hour. 



ii 

The Uplifted Eye Has Positive Value for the Preacher. 

It will not only save him from temptations, but will 
furnish him incentives and bring blessings into his personal 
life and into his ministry. 

1 . By the larger vision you will preserve harmony between 
yourselves and your Textbook. It is a sad day for a preacher 
when he gets out of harmony with the Bible. The Bible, 
as your beloved and distinguished teacher, Dr. Carver, has 
so convincingly shown, is a missionary book. It is a book 
with a far vision, a book of human expanses, a world 
atmosphere, an ageless purpose. It was made on purpose 
to make big men as well as good men. It deals with great 
matters. The Infinite God is its author. The whole world 
is compassed in its compassion and purpose. You cannot 
form the habit of exclusive local concentration and not 
pay the price of being out of harmony with your Textbook. 
If the preacher is to keep his life in harmony with the 
Book, he must take his cue from it and train his vision on 
the great matters with which it deals. The objective of 
this Revelation is a lost world. This Book is in quest of 
God's scattered humanity, and the preacher is to be in life 
and message the Book's interpreter. If he does this faith- 
fully, he must look on the fields which are white unto har- 
vest. 

2. The preacher needs atmosphere in his ministry, and 
he will get this from the Bible and the stretching plains and 
highlands which these harvest fields present. If his min- 
istry is to be robust, healthful, stimulating, normal and 
contagious, he must find something which will save him from 
narrowing the scope of his pulpit utterances. The Bible 
when interpreted with due reference to the mission fields 
with their amplitudes of opportunity, need and vast con- 



THE UPLIFTED EYE 139 

cerns, will prove a tonic for the man who is self-centered, 
morbid, introspective, brooding, or selfish. It is an outward- 
looking, upward-looking, and forward-looking book. It is- 
full of characters who were poor, despised, persecuted, 
and, as the world would say, unfortunate, but who were 
in the midst of their trials robust, uncomplaining, and opti- 
mistic, without self -consciousness, hopeful, joyful, trium- 
phant men and women. The men and women of this book 
are the most wholesome of all historical characters. They 
were missionary heroes. They had spiritual horizons, lofty 
and broad aims. The counterpart of these men and women 
are found on the mission fields to-day, — missionaries who 
have forsaken all to go forth at the call of the world to give 
their lives to gospel ministry and human service, and native 
Christians who have forsaken mothers and fathers and 
houses and lands and brothers and sisters for the Kingdom 
of Christ's sake, and yet who in their self-denyings are 
not conscious that they have paid a great price, so rich 
and full is their religious life. From these men and women 
the preacher will gain inspiration for his ministry, and from 
the fields of their activities he will gain atmosphere for his 
pulpit, in which to grow and develop a wholesome, healthful 
ministry. 

3. The vision which is gathered by the uplifted eye will, 
while helping the preacher, help his people. It is pitiful 
to see a minister who cannot pull himself together and 
out of ruts and get away from the level of community 
topics, such as hard times, and certain popular amusements. 
Too much dwelling on these matters, however justifiable 
their condemnation may be, will soon tell on the size of a 
man's ministry and develop antagonisms which will aggra- 
vate him and disturb his church. The man with missionary 
horizons will be lured to greater heights, and by such allur- 
ing as will lift him and his people out of the ruts and 
away from the things which he cannot by much drubbing 
cure. There is more correction for the worldly habit in the 
world vision of Christian service than in all reprobations 
of this or that particular form of worldliness. 



140 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

The ministry which has in it the breadth of the harvest 
fields will lift men and women out of themselves. Some 
preachers overdo the job of comforting the saints. Their 
ministry does not carry a wholesome atmosphere. The con- 
solations of the gospel of Christ become maudlin sentimen- 
tality. It is a fact that many of your dear brethren, and 
some of your dear sisters, do not need to be made to feel 
comfortable. You are wasting your tender consolations 
upon them when you ought to be stirring up their nests. 
The thing which many of the discontented need is not so 
much your pity as a great view of Christ's work for the 
world and a worthy part in that work. The uplifted eye 
will bring to you and your people the breezes from the 
harvest fields and the everlasting hills, and will show them 
vistas of opportunity and privilege which will prove a cura- 
tive for many of their fancied ills. 

The preacher who qualifies himself for service by this 
larger vision will cure his people of peskiness and rid him- 
self of many vexations. The men and women who sit 
regularly under the ministry of a man with the missionary 
vision and passion will instinctively catch his spirit, or else 
they will fall away like dead flies and cease to vex him. 
The man who is over much bothered by peskiness in his 
congregation is likely addicted to a petty ministry. It is 
better for the minister to be without alliances with men 
and women who cannot be persuaded to attempt great things 
for God. The missionary enterprise has, among the benefits 
which it has conferred upon modern Christianity, served 
to divide the sheep from the goats. The forward-looking 
men and women have disentangled themselves of the Hard- 
shells and anti-missionary element, and in the adventurous 
spirit of the New Testament marched forward into the 
harvest fields where the reapers are singing and the golden 
grain is being gathered. 

4. The preacher with the uplifted eye gets inspiration for 
his ministry from another source. He finds himself identi- 
fied with a great enterprise and learns that there is room 
in this enterprise for the utmost output of his powers. As 



THE UPLIFTED EYE 141 

he merges his ministry into it, he is conscious that his powers 
are waxing. In a field so vast he finds that there is a task 
congenial for every one, and this increases his power to 
enlist others for Christian service. He gets, too, the inspira- 
tion of great comradeship in service. His soul responds to 
the Christian heroism on the fields of his observation. He 
is enlarged, his purpose gains in strength, and his ministry 
shortly evidences a new power. He gathers incentive and 
purpose, acquires breadth of sympathy and knowledge, and 
speaks with more passion, more confidence, more authority, 
and more convincingly. 

5. There is still another reason why young preachers 
should begin early to cultivate the uplifted eye. The preacher 
is an adventurer, an itinerant. I presume that it is ordained 
by heaven that he should be an itinerant, but, if not, it is 
ordained by the deacons that the average preacher shall 
be a man who pitches his moving tent. He has no abiding 
city. Young men, you had better carry your observations 
and familiarities beyond the community to larger fields and 
into larger interests, because the Lord or a church confer- 
ence may thrust you unexpectedly into these. The place 
that knows you now miay shortly know you no more forever. 
You do not want to go into a strange land. Then familiarize 
yourself with what lies beyond your present parish. Then, 
too, the ministry which is lived under the inspiration of the 
larger vision awakens your dormant powers, calls out your 
resources, rewards the expenditure of your energies, also 
prepares you for eventualities. If tinder the spell of this 
vision the Lord thrusts you into other fields of labor, you 
will go into these with a sense' of equality for whatever 
comes, with a certain calm sense of masterfulness which will 
not desert you. If you are capable of a great ministry, 
this is the road to it, and a great ministry is to be chosen 
above great scholarship or skillful homiletics, or gorgeous 
rhetoric, or flaming oratory. It will do more to take care 
of you in the midst of new experiences than all of these 
combined. The minister has use for all of the above gifts 
and attainments, but they are the technique of his art which 



142 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

must be heightened and forgotten in the inspiration of a 
great vision, and thus made effective in the performance 
of a great task and the achievement of great triumphs. 

6. The minister with this vision cannot be long dis- 
couraged. In moments when the battle seems to turn against 
him at that part of the line where he is stationed, he will 
take a new look at the whole battle front and his courage 
and hope will revive. He will take a new grip on his min- 
istry and new hope for the cause of Christ as he catches new 
inspiration from the heroisms of others. The man of vision 
can never despair of the ultimate outcome of his ministry 
and the ministry of his brothers. There is enough happen- 
ing any day on the mission fields to impart hope and cheer 
to your Blue Monday. 

7. But the upward look will for some of you bring 
into view your life-task. It is this that concerns me par- 
ticularly in bringing these matters to the attention of the 
men and women of this Seminary and Training School. 
Young men, have you made the larger survey? Have you 
tried to appraise the claims of the world upon you ? Some 
of you have already named yourselves "volunteers." For 
this I give thanks. In some quiet hour you lifted up your 
eyes, you looked on the fields, you listened for the voice of 
God, and in the vision of that hour you heard the voice of 
Macedonia and gathered that God had called you. You 
answered with your life that call. May it not be that others 
of you here would have made a like decision if you had 
lifted up your eyes and looked on the fields white and great 
and plenteous? Will you not give the call of the foreign 
mission fields their due and a faithful consideration? 



in 

The Urgency of the Mission Fields at Present 

I want in these closing moments to ask you to think of 
these matters in the light of present world circumstances. 
There are peculiar reasons why ministers should heed the 



THE UPLIFTED EYE 143 

admonition of the Saviour to his preacher disciples at Jacob's 
well in this hour which finds us face to face in this room. 
It is true as never before that the fields are white. There 
is much in present world conditions to urge you to lift up 
your eyes. 

1. I would have you think of the harvests which are 
being gathered by other leaders. Through this Seminary 
other men have passed into the waiting harvest fields a little 
in advance of you. These are gathering sheaves unto life 
eternal. Think of the situation at home. No evangelical 
Christian denomination ever made in a single twelve months 
such record as Southern Baptists made last year. Can 
you realize it? Two hundred and fifty thousand responsible 
individuals baptized by white Baptist preachers of the South 
last year on voluntary personal acknowledgment of Christ as 
Saviour ! A quarter of a million responsible church members 
added to our great numbers in a single twelve months! 
There is no duplicate record in the annals of Christendom. 
These converts were not made by the preachers, but preach- 
ers went forth into the harvest fields and these came to 
baptismal waters and to church membership on their own 
volitions. The fields were ripe. These 250,000 responsible 
individuals were not drafted. They were volunteers. They 
are not the result of infant coercion, but they are the 
trophies of the gospel of Christ proclaimed by those w r ho 
iove that gospel and love to tell it. In the Middle Ages 
there were military conquests in Europe which made men 
and women unwilling subjects of ecclesiastical hierarchies, 
but these men and women, boys and girls, throughout our 
Southland, of their own choice, turned away from their 
sins to the Saviour and chose to walk in paths of obedience 
to Him. This is but an indication of how ripe the harvest 
fields at home are. 

But uplift your eyes and look beyond the evangelistic 
work of your state, beyond the South, and beyond America. 
Scan the world fields, and you will get a vision which is 
no less thrilling and heartening. The truth is, in propor- 
tion to the number of leaders, there is greater gleaning on 



144 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

the mission fields which we call heathen and papal than on 
the home fields. Missionaries in China and South America 
are baptizing more converts per man than are the 12,000 
preachers in the South, so ripe are the fields. Baptist 
preachers in Hungary, Roumania, and Russia, in tattered 
coats, in bare feet, gaunt and hungry, are abroad in the 
harvest fields turning multitudes to Christ. The fields are 
ripe already to harvest, but out yonder the reapers are few. 

2. The extremity of the world without God and without 
the gospel will impress those who look on the fields. The 
moral foundations of society are shaken. The human expe- 
dients have failed. Men are at their wit's end. Humanity 
is engulfed In universal sorrow. The terrors of hell have 
got hold on many, and men are falling back on God or into 
despair. I cannot escape the recurring thought that men 
are about to come to themselves, and in sheer exhaustion 
call on God as their only hope and refuge. It is true that 
sin abounds, but by its abounding it may signify duty and 
opportunity. It is often illustrated that where sin abounds 
grace much more abounds. Sin often marks a stage o£ 
human desperation and makes ready for the day of repent- 
ance and a field for the harvesters. Sin is to-day, I divine, 
defeating itself. It has by going its length proved its futility 
and revealed the necessity of a remedy. Certainly when 
Satan is busy, the servants of the Lord should be quickened 
to new zeal, faithfulness and courage. 

3. There are certain conditions in the world which seem 
to be favorable for the effectual insinuation of the gospel 
into the hearts of men. There is among men and nations a 
longing for friendship, for reliable and unfailing alliance. 
Insincerity and secret diplomacy have destroyed confidence. 
Instance Russia. Where will the people of Russia find 
refuge? Where will they find support for their fainting 
hearts and that which will revive their crushed spirits? I 
do not wonder at the tidings which are escaping through 
underground channels of souls among the masses in Russia 
seeking for God, and the quick and large response which 
ministers of hope are having to their testimony. 



THE UPLIFTED EYE 145 

4. Then, too, we have reached a harvest period in the 
work which we have been doing. We have passed the 
experimental stage in missionary work. We have gone be- 
yond the initial steps. Hostility is fast disappearing on all 
the mission fields. We have reaped the firstfruits, and these 
are but an earnest Our schools are now beginning to 
produce results. They have sent forth men and women with 
Christian experiences and nurtured in Christian ideals. 
Native churches have been established. The Word of God 
has been translated and a literature has been created. De- 
cisive victories have been won, and impregnable positions 
have been taken. Influential natives now reenforce the 
missionaries. A comradeship has been provided on the 
mission fields in the increasing number of volunteers and 
appointments. Heathen priests, people, and government 
officials now recognize the permanence and persistence of 
Christian missions. 

Opposition and indifference are giving way at home. 
The old methods which deceivers once used to hurt this 
great enterprise are obsolete and falsifiers of Foreign Mis- 
sions are discredited. The enterprise is well organized. 
It has the backing of rich men and strong churches, as 
well as the prayers of a multitude of women and the poor. 
The cause on the mission fields is led by some of the 
brightest, most cultured and capable men and women our 
schools have been able to turn out, and these are backed 
by an increasing solidarity in the home forces. Foreign 
Missions is well organized. The Foreign Mission Board 
of the Southern Baptist Convention is one of the few insti- 
tutions in the city where it is located that does business 
running into millions annually. We have recently secured 
an office building which sets us in a permanent place among 
the enterprises of the city, the money for this building being 
given by two friends, the steadfast friends of Foreign Mis- 
sions and the supporters of this enterprise on the field as 
well as at home. The Foreign Mission Board has as good 
credit as any business concern in Richmond, and a credit 
which is far more extensive than the credit of any firm 



146 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 

in our city. The Foreign Mission Board's Letter of Credit 
is as good around the world as a draft on a New York inter- 
national banking corporation. These are but the material 
aspects of a great spiritual enterprise, but they do indicate 
that Foreign Missions has passed the experimental stage, 
and that it is securely guaranteed by the purposes and re- 
sources of Southern Baptists. The young man or young 
woman who goes out to represent Southern Baptists on 
the foreign mission field has a financial and moral backing 
that does not follow any commercial traveler into the Far 
East or in search of South American trade. 

Conclusion 

I must conclude these remarks, but in this closing moment 
I wish to come to close quarters with you, my young friends. 
I did not come to speak before you but to speak to you. 
I have not cared to make a speech, but I have earnestly 
desired to have you help me make a great Christian enter- 
prise, and to make it vastly stronger and more fruitful. I 
am not concerned to win your applause. I would win you. 
I would speak to you individually. I have come to ask you 
to look upon the harvest fields ripe and plentiful, and if I 
could, to make these so alluring, to show you so convincingly 
their promise and their need, as to make you a missionary 
volunteer. I am emboldened to make this appeal because I 
do not think you will ever regret the decision if you make 
it here to-day. In Pekin some months ago I met a Miss 
Williams in the home of a veteran missionary. I found her 
the life of a circle of young people and a refreshing member 
of a circle which included older folks. She talked and 
laughed and sang and played, just as the bright young 
woman does in the drawing room at home. I inquired of 
her the reason for her presence in China, and she told me 
her story. She said that her father was a victim of the 
Boxers in the uprising, that when they had hacked his body 
to pieces and he was nigh unto death, he said to a friend who 
found him, "Take my boy to America and educate him to 



THE UPLIFTED EYE 147 

be a missionary in China." The boy was just a little fellow 
and his sister was small. They were sent to America. She 
had gone through the schools here, and she said, "I have 
felt that if that was my father's wish for my brother, it 
would certainly be his wish for me, and I am going back 
to my father's station to witness for Christ among those 
who slew him." I admonish you not to find any exception 
in this case nor contradiction in her merriment and her mis- 
sionary purpose. Wherever I have gone on mission fields 
in any land, I have found the missionaries wholesome, 
happy, purposeful, and glad of their decision to be mission- 
aries. 



THE END 



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